We had glorious weather today! I even opened a bunch of windows. That drove Seth and Buddy nuts because they can't go outside. Our house is too close to the highway for the cats to be allowed out safely. This morning, I cleaned the bird bath on the back deck and added some pebbles while the cats watched me through the screen, meowing. A couple of years ago, I had put a plant outside for summer weather because Seth had chewed all the greenery off of it. I had hoped that it would gather itself together and regrow before summer was over, but instead, it died. I'll admit. I have a yellow thumb. I wasn't always this bad, but having the cats chewing on things doesn't help. I have three living house plants, one which is poisonous, and two of which are desert plants, and prickly.
I had thought I'd get around to planting something else in this nice pot. We'd had this plant since our wedding and I was sad to lose it. The only reason it had lived as long as it did was that my husband cared for it and I squirted the cat with water whenever he jumped up to chew on it. It had lived in an oval tin, shaped something like a horse trough, but on a very small scale. While the pot waited, empty and sad, it sat on the back deck with this pathetic dead stick standing in the middle.
Then one day, the cats noticed something happening around this pot. I noticed the cats sitting at the sliding glass door as if they were kids watching cartoons. The pot had overflowed with water from early summer rain and chickadees and tiny song sparrows were using it as a bird bath. They actually lined up to take turns, chattering all the while! One bird would be in the shallow bath, the water only an inch or two deep. One bird clung to the dead stick. Another would bounce on a sprig of salmonberry that hung over the edge of the deck. The deck was alive with activity. I found that even when I sat there writing at my little deck table, they bathed, as if I were no more worrisome than a cow.
I began to look forward to their activity, usually in the mid-afternoon on a sunny day. I even thought I was doing them a favor by replacing the dirt and the stick in the pot with nice clean stones instead. They were not amused. The stones I used were too big and made parts of the water too deep. Plus, they missed their dead stick. So I rearranged the stones, added smaller ones, and found a stick that might give the first bird in line a decent perch from which to chatter at the one bathing to hurry up.
Since then, I've been collecting small pebbles and occasionally sprinkling them over the bigger stones to fill in the holes. It's surprising to imagine what is deep water to a chickadee. Today, I added more pebbles that I'd found in the yard and rearranged them in the pot to make it almost an even depth. It's pretty, with red, white, green, and black pebbles gathering together around the bigger stones and filling in the gaps. Soon enough, they'll all be covered in algae, but it was pretty today. I wondered if the birds would prefer warm to cold water on a cool sunny day like this. I figured that the warm water might be a bit disconcerting, but I added it anyway to see what they would do. While I worked, a single chickadee stood in the bushes, chattering away. I imagined her saying that I should hurry up, that it was her turn now.
Tomorrow, when the birds are bathing in their clean, newly rearranged bath, it will drive the cats nuts because they can't go outside. That's just retribution, I guess, for when they ate my wedding plant.
Thank you for listening, jb
I had thought I'd get around to planting something else in this nice pot. We'd had this plant since our wedding and I was sad to lose it. The only reason it had lived as long as it did was that my husband cared for it and I squirted the cat with water whenever he jumped up to chew on it. It had lived in an oval tin, shaped something like a horse trough, but on a very small scale. While the pot waited, empty and sad, it sat on the back deck with this pathetic dead stick standing in the middle.
Then one day, the cats noticed something happening around this pot. I noticed the cats sitting at the sliding glass door as if they were kids watching cartoons. The pot had overflowed with water from early summer rain and chickadees and tiny song sparrows were using it as a bird bath. They actually lined up to take turns, chattering all the while! One bird would be in the shallow bath, the water only an inch or two deep. One bird clung to the dead stick. Another would bounce on a sprig of salmonberry that hung over the edge of the deck. The deck was alive with activity. I found that even when I sat there writing at my little deck table, they bathed, as if I were no more worrisome than a cow.
I began to look forward to their activity, usually in the mid-afternoon on a sunny day. I even thought I was doing them a favor by replacing the dirt and the stick in the pot with nice clean stones instead. They were not amused. The stones I used were too big and made parts of the water too deep. Plus, they missed their dead stick. So I rearranged the stones, added smaller ones, and found a stick that might give the first bird in line a decent perch from which to chatter at the one bathing to hurry up.
Since then, I've been collecting small pebbles and occasionally sprinkling them over the bigger stones to fill in the holes. It's surprising to imagine what is deep water to a chickadee. Today, I added more pebbles that I'd found in the yard and rearranged them in the pot to make it almost an even depth. It's pretty, with red, white, green, and black pebbles gathering together around the bigger stones and filling in the gaps. Soon enough, they'll all be covered in algae, but it was pretty today. I wondered if the birds would prefer warm to cold water on a cool sunny day like this. I figured that the warm water might be a bit disconcerting, but I added it anyway to see what they would do. While I worked, a single chickadee stood in the bushes, chattering away. I imagined her saying that I should hurry up, that it was her turn now.
Tomorrow, when the birds are bathing in their clean, newly rearranged bath, it will drive the cats nuts because they can't go outside. That's just retribution, I guess, for when they ate my wedding plant.
Thank you for listening, jb
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