My small city garden brings me delight throughout the year. One of the reasons I bought this house was the yard – I’m on a lot and a half, so I have narrow side yard (10 feet or so?) that runs along the house and leads to a few steps that you go up and around to the back to find the main garden, a circle of lawn surrounded by flowerbeds. Ten years ago, when I won a substantial chunk of change on “Jeopardy!,” the main splurge was getting the side yard landscaped – a flagstone walk with beds on either side and a few large plants (a witch hazel, a crape myrtle, a hibsicus). Well, ten years is a reasonable amount of time, and the crape myrtle, especially, is getting pretty big – the effect from the upstairs bathroom is like being in a treehouse. It hangs over the walkway, and at this point the area beneath it is a shade garden, a fact I’m only starting to come to terms with. My garden started out as mostly sunny, when I moved in in 1990 – but the neighbors to my south put in an ornamental pear that throws most of the backyard into shade, and I did it to myself with the crape myrtle in the said yard. This spring I moved a climbing rose that the previous owners had planted, because it was right next to the tree, and I planted impatiens, not petunias, in the annual beds along the walk this year.
Anyway, the crape myrtle, as you’ve gathered, is the main thing you see in the side yard – it’s not only big and hanging over the walkway, it’s covered with hot pink flowers in the summer. I love this tree. It’s right outside the window where my computer is, so when I stop tp think and stare out the window, that’s what I’m staring it. And I’d noticed this one bird, a little gray thing, kept flying up and landing on the branch right outside – and, yep, I went out and looked into the tangled branches of the tree and it looked like there was a nest up there. It was hard to get a look at the bird, though, and it was driving me nuts trying to figure out what it was, since there was no real distinguishing marks on it that I could see (or was it just bad lighting in the shade and my middle-aged eyes?). But I’ve been watching it for a couple of weeks. Well, this morning, I finally figured out what it was: a catbird.
And tonight, while I was sitting on the john looking out the window, I noticed two or three cute little roly-poly gray birds frolicking around awkwardly in the top branches of the tree. Yup, baby catbirds, learning how to fly. Way, way, way too cool!
