Every year when summer begins, I buy hanging baskets for my back patio. I love flowers and have always had really good luck with geraniums. So this year I decided to surround my patio with geranium filled hanging baskets. I usually choose red but this time I chose one basket with shocking pink flowers.
Summer began, and my patio was beautiful. But one day I noticed a bird sitting on the shepherd’s pole and then flying into my hanging basket. I watched it for a moment until I saw the bird fly out again. I breathed a sigh of relief and went about my business.
The next day when I went to water my geranium I noticed moss, tiny twigs, and some pine straw in it. Puzzled, I was going to clean it out but was distracted by something else and just forgot about it.
Later that afternoon, I stood at my window admiring my geraniums when I noticed the bird once again flying in and out of my hanging basket. It did not take long for me to figure out that this tiny wren was using my hanging basket with pink geraniums as a nesting place.
Now, I confess to being very aggravated. I seriously wanted that bird to go somewhere else. I mean, what a stupid place to build a nest! But I saw how hard she worked to build her home, so reluctantly I left it alone and actually protected it. I was careful about waiting until Mrs. Wren would fly out of the basket before I pruned the dying flowers on top. I didn’t even trim some of the withered leaves, and I was very cautious about watering the plant. By this time the mama bird was making fewer flights away from the nest and seemed to settle inside the foliage in the basket.
I was pretty sure that eggs were there since Mama Wren had settled herself in her nest, so I refused to let my husband cut the grass near the basket around the patio, my grandchildren had to play on the other side of the patio away from the nest, and I carefully watered the plant behind where I thought the nest was. I even stopped pruning the plant. It began to look a little ragged, but when I peeped through the leaves to see what was going on I often caught the wren staring back at me.
One afternoon I watched a storm come, sending the flower basket swinging and swaying like a boat caught in a squall on the ocean. But the birds refused to leave.
Within a week I noticed the male and female wrens flying to and from the basket. And a few days later I even heard tiny peeps coming from it. My husband and I carefully peeked into the basket and saw two tiny little heads popping up with open mouths.
I was so excited! I felt as though these were actually my birds and my babies. I couldn’t wait to see the baby birds learn to fly. And one day sitting on my porch swing, I saw a little bird hop onto the rim of the hanging basket but then pop back into the leaves.
With anticipation, I got up early the next morning thinking that this would be the day the baby birds would leave the nest. I watched at the window for a long time and even went outside to the porch swing to watch for a while, but I never saw the baby birds. Frowning, I worried over the birds until I couldn’t stand it anymore and went to look into the basket. But they were all gone.
I felt cheated! I didn’t get to see them leave! I had missed the whole thing! How dare they leave just like that! Was this the thanks I got for letting them move into my hanging basket like squatters?
Frustrated, I gathered up my shears and went to work cleaning up the neglected geranium. It had been three weeks since I had last pruned it, so it was really a mess. But as I removed dead leaves, I noticed something amazing.
I discovered the wonder of the nest. It was an engineering marvel. The two tiny wrens had constructed what looked like a twig cave. The tiny pieces of moss and grass, as well as twigs and pieces of pine straw, had been knitted together so tightly that no water could get in and no wind could destroy it. It wasn’t like a typical nest open on the top. It sat on its side like a hollow in a cave and what was even more remarkable was there was an egg still inside.
It was not viable and never hatched, but the beauty of this tiny white and blue/brown speckled egg the size of a small pebble laying at the bottom of this waterproof little home caused me to feel such awe and yet sadness.
I was sad that this little egg would never hatch but thrilled to know that I could remove that nest, keep it, and hold on to those three exciting weeks for the rest of my life. It is a priceless memento. And oddly enough, though many of my other hanging baskets and plants have suffered because of the heat and drought, this one basket is more beautiful than the others because, though I found it an aggravation at first, the nest protected the soil, kept it moist, and caused it to thrive.
I miss my little bird family, but I’m grateful for the three weeks I had with them. The older I get, the more I’m learning to appreciate the little things in life that unexpectedly come my way.
