Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Big Nest in the Little Woods




Spring begins, usually, in just this sort of gray/black way, all branches and silhouettes, except that this year it isn't doing that at all.  This year it is all sun and tulips greening, so warm that yesterday I finished cleaning up the Hanson Hedge Roses I'd begun cutting back last fall.  I will probably sacrifice their lovely, single June blooms for my efforts, but they were beginning to take over my little vegetable plot and a considerable section of lawn--time for me to regain some control, or, at least, to try. 



After the last thorny cane had been hauled to the brush pile, I wandered back into the woods, for the forty-seventh time, to see if there was any activity in the owl's nest.  There it sits, eighty feet above the forest floor, a mass of sticks and twigs nestled into a cherry tree so skillfully that even though I know it's there I still have a hard time finding it.  The March wind blows it back and forth, rocking it like a cradle, and so if eggs or owlets are present, they are certainly being soothed.  They are not, however, making themselves known.  I fear an empty nest this year, but then again, I recall that owls are very wise about drawing attention away from their nests.  The gray/black spring works for them.  Sun and tulips work for me.

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