Outside the Kitchen Window

There are little brown birds foraging outside the kitchen window. One lands on a leaning dandelion stem and carries the seed head to the ground where he attacks it vigorously, white tufts flying around him. I flip through A Field Guide to Western Birds, left on the windowsill for just this purpose, but can’t match the white striped heads and clay colored backs to any of the drawings. Wren? Warbler? Chickadee? I don’t know. Little brown birds. Seed eaters. I stand admiring them while the water boils.

The chaos of our yard seems to please the animals neighbors, if not, perhaps, the human. There are brush piles, wood chip piles, piles of old cedar fence blown down in winter storms that shelter small, hopping birds and the occasional rabbit. The grass in back has grown long and tufted, well beyond the reach of our second hand mower, and full of bolting weeds. Three does, patchy from winter, wander through most days at dawn or dusk. We chase them away halfheartedly and lean old fence panels across the garden’s unfinished gates. Crows and robins probe the newly forked vegetable beds. There are blackcap chickadees nesting in a knothole at the top of the apple tree—branches too close to the house, the fruit small and mealy—that we limbed, girdled, and left standing as an interesting and unsightly snag. Soon, I hope, the Pacific tree frogs will come hopping back from wherever it is they spend their winters.

Coffee brewed, I return to the window. The birds are gone, leaving behind the murdered dandelion. I carry the mug to my desk and sit to write the morning’s note.

Sophie
Owner | Baker

Kitchen garden and house: works in progress.