Mow with Joy!

 

A bird watcher I’ve always been. Wrench, my hubby had a troubled relationship with birds. Robins tried to nest over our deck door and he pulled the nest down before they could establish it. They retaliated by building a nest under the eaves of the garage and before he noticed it, there were eggs in it and I stood in front of it arms outstretched. If he came anywhere near the nest, the robins dive bombed him, flying close over his head.

 

Sparrows were also a bane of his. They would rest on the outside rear view mirror of his all white van and mess down the side of it. They made nests over the porch light. He put wire over the lights and a rubber snake over the deck door. The snake is still there. Scared the grandson recently when he reached up to pull down a piece of straw from a leftover nest dangling there. But Wrench worked hard when he found out that purple martins eat their weight in mosquitos every day. He installed a purple martin condo in the middle of the back yard and set it in cement, with a telescoping pole so it could be lowered for cleaning. Which he did several times when sparrows squatted there while he was waiting impatiently for the martins. Who never came. He finally after a few years took the condo down, lowered the pole and we still mow around it. Never mentioned why he took it down.

 

Fast forward to a cool August morning when I fired up the lawn tractor and went to mow the front yard. I made one pass around the yard’s perimeter, and suddenly I wasn’t alone anymore.  A large flock of purple martins came out of nowhere and surrounded me and the mower. I went on mowing and they followed me, doing their own version of what barn swallows do, flying high and wide, even passing so closely one went over the hood of the mower as I moved along. They stayed with me as I mowed, dropping to the ground occasionally to pick at the freshly mown grass behind me. They were with me till I left the back yard almost done, with the gas gauge heavily on red. All the time they were there, I was either laughing or crying, laughing with joy from the moment or crying because they didn’t come for him when he wanted them. The laughing won, it was a treat. They didn’t sing or squawk but they sure can dance. Remember what I said at the end of a post recently? Let’s dance!