Amy in the Garden

I rather liked the muted colors in my last post, but as I looked at it again this evening, I realized that the colors might not appeal to all. I started to write about making tomato sauce, reasoning that a post filled with red red red should be welcome, and perhaps it would indeed, but…writing about making sauce after writing about prepping garlic made me so tired.

I need a day off from even writing about work.

So, as promised a few days ago, let me tell you a bit about a garden party I had last weekend, for five glorious women, and the men that are their equals. I worked with these women many years ago. Writers and editors all, I welcomed them with the best my garden could serve up: an introduction of Crispy Kale, sidebars of cucumbers, complicated sentences of pesto, and fat little punctuation marks in the cherry tomatoes. The food they brought to share? Oh, much more insightful and complex than mine: novels, sonnets, and a plateful of haikus in the deviled eggs.

Here is the color from the garden party. It started with empty vases, just like the party started with my empty house:

And, in anticipation of the conversation and laughter, here are the volunteers that filled the vases, as my guests filled my house and my happy day:

I host daily in my garden, but my guests are almost never people. I watch from my front porch in the mornings and evenings, at the wheeling birds, and dipping butterflies. I watch in dread for the streak of the chipmunk. I have, by the way, escorted 5 of those “guests” out….for good.

Yesterday morning I went to check the hav-a-hart traps at first light. MacKenzie came, too. She is always welcome in my garden and she is the very definition of enthusiastic guest. She races up and down each aisle, nose to ground, hunting for the uninvited. She stopped at one small hav-a-hart and watched with close attention.

Her posture was different than when she spies a trapped chipmunk. Then her entire being quivers, and if I lift the trap off the ground, her nose is immediately on top of the trap, trying to shove it back down so that she can dominate. But that morning, she simply stood and watched. Interested, but uncertain.

I lifted the trap, and immediately thought, “Oh, it weighs nothing. Something tripped the door. That’s all.”

Imagine my astonishment when I found two sparrows inside!

I should have raced inside for my camera, but I was so startled and concerned for them that I held the trap high and lifted the bar holding the door secure, and then the door itself. One sparrow rocketed out immediately. A gentle shake encouraged the second to follow.

I was so happy to release them, but I also felt badly. What a rude reception for my bug-eating guests!

I’ve been watching the second (or could it be the third?) batch of fledglings badgering their parents recently, hopping after them on the ground, sidling towards them on slender branches, with wings a-quiver. “Oh, I’m so desperately hungry! Pity me, your tiny starve-ling child!”

The parent birds aren’t buying any bit of it.

I wonder if some weary sparrow mom, trying to buy a few moments peace, suggested they go to my garden to feed themselves? “Enough! For once, feed yourself. What are you blind?! I work like a dog to raise you near gardens like that. Flit over the fence and have at it!”

And then, I wonder, did she hear that metal door drop, and regret her hasty words? If she did feel pangs they were short-lived, as the babies were released almost immediately. They are welcome back, any time, and I plan to change the bait from bird seed to….something else compelling to chipmunks. Feed to please, or feed to trap? I have two faces as a hostess.

WORDS FROM OTHERS

“Beauty is everywhere a welcome guest.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe