Even though the flowers and weeds have almost taken over my vegetable garden, amid this chaos there are some tasty delights for human goats like Gerry and me. We’ve eaten spinach. lettuce, onions, green beans, carrots and our favorite herbs: cilantro, parsley, dill, oregano and mint — much of it consumed on site!Difficult to see from this angle is the strawberry patch at the south end of the garden.
Right smack in peak strawberry season, I stumbled — literally — across a tiny hidden treasure among the plants. Thinking it was an old robin’s nest from last year that had gotten tossed into the garden by mistake I reached down and grabbed it, intending to put it into the compost bin. I was dismayed to discover, once I had it up close enough to notice, there was one tiny brown-speckled blue egg inside the nest. Ever so carefully, I tucked the nest back into the little hollow in the ground that remained from where I had lifted it and then fretted that the mother bird would not return.
Happily, over the next three days, one more egg was added each day. It wasn’t long before they hatched out and very quickly those tiny naked blind creatures sprouted feathers, opened their eyes and flew away.
Unlike baby robins in unreachable nests who noisily demand food with wide-stretched beaks, these bitty wonders never made a sound — not one peep. Silent and almost invisible in amongst the leaves, they waited for their mother to stuff bugs into their open beaks.
It occurred to me later that the mother wren never would have put her nest in my garden if I had been in it every day, weeding and harvesting — it wouldn’t have been safe. But since I have so neglected the garden this summer, busy with travel and speaking, mama wren assumed the property was derelict and happily built her nest therein. Typically it would have annoyed me to have such an unkempt garden but instead, I am incredibly grateful to have been given this gift of wonder from God — to be able to watch creation’s drama unfold in miniature in my own back yard — not because I deserve it but just because He loves to make His children smile.
Hope for the Rest of Us 