A Little Birdie Came Inside Today

All I planned on doing today was a good catch up in the garden. Although I haven’t been well, today I felt terrific and rushed around early to lug on my black gumboots and old raggedy, loose jeans, bell bottoms in fact, ugh, with a huge overshirt, making me look like a beggar from the old west. But there was an unusual obstacle to my finishing my tasks. This unscheduled stopover of a miniscule traveler inside our cozy cottage halted all progress outside. A tiny fantail decided it liked being in the offbeat, slightly dusty environment we call home sweet home, rather than soaring up and down outside singing away cheerfully. When I came in, it was fairly obvious that I had winged company as it was having a grand ole time swooping through the rooms and landing on the drapes and cupboards. But the piece de resistance for this avian charmer was the old slightly broken slats of our handy dandy clothes dryer hanging suspended from our ceiling, which yours truly gets to lower and then raise again after putting slightly damp articles of our washing on this to dry, often with the fire roaring below.
But this teeny guy or gal, hard to know, had a particular fondness for chilling out on this contraption, made of easily recognized wood just like the tree branches outside and at just the right height so I could hardly photograph it or guide it back out through the two open windows of the kitchen, which is probably how it got inside in the first place. And so, it sat there looking quite peaceful and in some sort of contemplative process. Many minutes passed and eventually it too, passed a very small poo that fell to the ground silently. That was the last straw I thought to myself.
I have so many plants inside that these tiny creatures have come before to be close to my flowers and vines cascading from various vases and pots with glasses inside of enough water to keep the greenery growing and fresh. Most root easily near the windows especially. Actually, I used to believe that they came to see me. I enjoy a good whistle with them and even sing to them and sometimes run the hose, which they find thrilling, but I’ve since learned that they come in for the little bugs that also come in and that’s all and that’s what they do while they’re flying.
So rather than getting my broom to escort it out the mean witch way, I decided to quickly get John involved but by the time we came back into the house, the bird had vanished.
The moral here is easy. My big plans of planting 30 baby Cos lettuce seedlings evaporated. I had already done my dash with the bird and prior to that had worked outside for a couple of hours. I needed a sit down at the very least to plan the next available date to finish all the myriad projects I’ve started. That should be when hell freezes over but judging by the weather lately, especially in North America, we’re not that far off. In fact, it’s the last month of summer here starting in a few days and we’re freezing ourselves. Thus, we layer our clothing just in case we get bad weather first thing in the morning and then it gets bloody hot, just in time for the evening chill. Some things definitely are just a little out of whack, like me, and the up and down climate. But I know for a fact that we’ve been in a few years of cooler summers based on solar cycles and we still have a few more years to go before the few years of warmer ones begins.
Nature always surprises us. Sometimes we’re ready for these. Sometimes we’re not.