It is spring. Thus, I clean. Today's rainy weather provided me with no good excuses for shirking my domestic duties, so I rolled up my sleeves and got to work cleaning out my home office. In a very short time, I filled up an embarassing number of grocery bags with old papers and magazines to take out to the recycling bin. Per ritual, I closed my eyes and wiggled my nose hoping that the bags would take themselves outside, but my magical powers are apparently on hiatus this week.
On my way out to the alley, I came upon a baby bird that had fallen out of its nest. Its tiny, featherless body contorted from the fall, the chick lay motionless on the wet concrete. All at once, I felt overcome with sadness for this Darwinian moment that had just played out on my patio. Knowing well that this was all part of the natural cycle, I still had an overwhelming desire to rewind time and put the baby safely back under its mother's wing. I actually started to worry about the mother bird, fretting over her empty nest.
Sometimes I wish there was a more profound word for the act of tending to a garden. "Gardening" will never do justice to this crazy passion of ours, a hobby/lifestyle/obsession that revolves around the cycles of life and death, the setting and rising of the sun...the rotation of the Earth even! Experiencing a swell of emotion over the baby bird today reminded me that no matter how many tricks or techniques or tonics we apply to our little garden worlds, sometimes we just have to accept the hand that the Earth dealt us and appreciate the aphids, or the difficult clay soil, or the squirrels that steal our tomatoes. We are mere stewards of the land. And some of us just happen to love stewarding more than others.
