Choosing the Space At Hand

It's a weed, really, sprung up between the greenhouse and the barn.  We've tried to keep such areas trimmed and cleared through the months, but recent weeks have narrowed the focus of our extrications to cultivated rows.  It's summer, and the garden is a pretty busy place.  In fact, if you turn your ear just right and listen very carefully you can hear the weeds growing through the garden rows, overtaking like some scary science fiction thriller.  We don't use chemicals to suppress the invasion, so hoes and hands in liberal amounts are required to give the seeds and stems we've actually planted a fighting chance.

A couple of days ago, however, we needed a diversion and focused on a different part of the property -- planting several frilly and flowering trees and shrubs in a corner we are just developing for looking, this time, rather than eating.  Afterwards, but in that same spirit of beautification, indulging a fit of horticultural bloodlust, Lori was in the midst of whacking down some unsightly encroachments when something caught her attention in this particular head-high weed and stilled her loppers.  A closer look revealed a nest.
Nestled in this weed.
Populated with hungry and gaping mouths.

Let me review the relevant data:  a 5-foot weed, having sprouted in the 2-foot gap between the greenhouse and the barn, hosting a nest that cradled newly hatched birds. 

A few years ago we spent a week in a cooking school in a small Italian town, taught each day by the women of that ancient Tuscan village.  Their kitchen equipment reflected the same philosophy as their recipes:  "Use what you have."  Utterly foreign was the thought of cluttering up the kitchen countertops and cabinets with single-use gewgaws -- as foreign, we would learn, as narrowly insisting on a specific set of ingredients for a recipe, or throwing away leftovers.  "Use what you have," we heard time and time again -- or at least that's the way the translator rendered it.

Which makes me think our birds must be Italian.  Americans are far too picky and we waste almost as much as we use.  Our burdening questions center on what we want, not what we have; on what would be fun, not on what would be most functional.  We pick our nesting places carefully and jealously, with eyes for glitter and rooms with a view.  Not so, this mother bird.  To my way of thinking she had alternative options.  There are, after all, plenty of trees from which to choose -- short ones, tall ones, fruited ones, thorned ones.  But for whatever reason the mother chose this weed in which to build a nest and lay her eggs -- sturdy enough, I suppose, and somewhat protected from wind and mischief but hardly high or failsafe.  But that little corridor, and that tall green intruder was not only what she had but what she chose to use.


I suspect I'll think of that nest, those hungry and parted beaks, and that mother's ingenuity the next time some garden gadget starts calling my name, or the need to have it all "just right."  Wedged into that cluttered space, that weed was the cradle of life.  It may not have been scenic; it offered precious little view, but it sufficed.  It was safe, secluded and accessible, and it was enough. 

Which, of course -- as it turns out to be in most things -- makes it perfect. 

Grow strong little peeps.  May you grow up to be as wise as your mother.