Monday, May 11, 2009

Gardeners that don't think

I can home today wondering if I'd see the neighbor's cats. As I walked under the pergola to our front door, I realized that I forgot to duck. The little momma finch who's been nesting tends to fly away if we linger too long, too close to her nest. The nest, as I've probably mentioned before, is made from seed pods of some local tree that they intertwined with the jasmine vines that grow up the pergola.

But when I looked up towards the nest, it wasn't there. In fact, once I got my bearings, I realized that a huge chunk of vines had been chopped away! I followed the beam of the pergola to see that they had trimmed back the vines to reduce the dead and overhanging debris. Unfortunately, and not surprisingly, they failed to notice the bird nest and cut it away with all the other brown material.

My heart just sank. It was so cute to know there would have been a baby bird chirping away in a matter of weeks. For me, it's also one of those weird omen things that I wanted to believe was a sign of hope for our own desire to have a baby. I couldn't help tear up as I dialed up Tim to tell him the sad news. I pigged out on a generous helping of Jalapeno Cheetos to console myself. (They are yummy!!)

Why couldn't the damn gardener thought of trimming these vines two months ago? You're supposed to cut things back in the spring before things start to bloom. I've also felt the community landscapers were kind of lazy. They never remove weeds or debris from our tiny lawn. They just walk around with the gas-powered blower. So long as the sidewalks and street look clean, the job is done. The day I have my own gardener, I'm going to insist he used only human-powered tools - broom, rakes, push mower.

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