Cold Weather Nest

As November ages, the descent into winter cold and diminishing light appears to accelerate. Memories of growth still. For me, one of the beautiful aspects of right now in northern climates is that the underlying structure of summer's fullness is in plain sight. The remains of tall prairie plants reveal what held up all the blooms a few months ago. Late fall into winter brings into view the underneath for us. From the time I first inhabited my own space, a college dorm room, I have gathered bunches of dried off-season plant material to tuck in the corner of at least one room. In quiet voice, it speaks to the essence of what is still there after all the seasonal shedding.

This week I was thrilled to discover a robin's nest with its long messy strands on the naked, outstretched branch of a tree in my front yard. The land where I live brims with robins in the birthing months. Some nests are easy to spy on a window ledge, drain pipe, or swaying branch of a pine tree. Others only make themselves known when robins and leaves are gone. Since nests that survive winter's windy fury are often used in a subsequent season, that nest out my front window is both recollection and promise, pointing to the nurturing of new life. We can't always glimpse that nurturing within us or around us. It has happened and it will happen again if we and the broad reach of creation that is our home cooperate with the impulse for life. Winter offers a stretch of time for us to ponder being protective spaces for coming life. When it's too icy or cold to venture out, I will pause, focusing on the nest with its call for each one to shelter life.

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Changing Neighborhood

When I moved to my current home, the backyard – bounded by the house, a cemetery, and an L-shaped field alternately in corn and beans – featured six trees, a remnant of overgrown land bordering the field to the south, and an unsightly burn pile. By the end of that first summer the burn pile was transformed into a beautiful fire pit. My second summer a huge swirl of black plastic was laid down with the fire pit in its center. The plastic's mission was to organically kill the grass beneath. It was weighed down with bricks, heavy chunks of wood, old furniture, anything that could match strength with the persistent prairie wind. After two months of plastic followed by twenty-eight yards of mulch, the first native shrubs were planted that second fall. They formed the beginning of our monarch waystation. Twelve of the thirteen shrubs survived the winter. And the following spring, last year, a mix of small native plants, milkweed-rich for the monarchs, was planted. Last summer turned into a battle with the bunnies who found the tender plants to be just right. By the end of the growing season some of the larger plants were still there with the shrubs.

Throughout this spring and summer, those early shrubs and plants have continued to flourish and spread. And others are being added. Several key intentions are central to the monarch waystation: sufficient milkweed-monarchs' source of food, all native planting, and varied color throughout the growing season. Over a few short years, the yard has become a totally different habitat. Many species of butterflies in addition to the monarchs, like the red spotted purple pictured above, have shown up. The yard is full of birds and small wildlife. A series of modest habitat choices is enriching our ecological neighborhood.

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Empty Nest Patience

I returned a couple of days ago after being away for a week and a half. During that time, the young robins in the nest on the front of my house matured and flew away. I missed the combination of parental teaching and a young bird's hesitation or boldness that resulted in the necessary plunge into thin air and successful flight. As I was traveling far from home encountering my own new adventures, the final act of the quiet nest drama took place. Life went on, but I had grown used to the robin accompaniment there outside my window. When my timing was just right, I was able to watch the mother robin patiently turn the eggs so they were equally warmed all around. Then her patience shifted to letting the babies do their own pecking to emerge from the too tight quarters of light blue eggs. Without that solo task, they would not be strong enough to survive. Sometimes at night when the world grew still, I could hear the tiny, hungry voices of my temporary neighbors in the nest on the drainpipe.

The picture above is of another empty nest out front. It hangs sideways from its anchoring place in the pine, displaced following a tumultuous spring storm. The drainpipe nest may well be used again. This one won't. Sooner or later, the pine tree will host patient construction again, a nest shaped one mouthful at a time.

Empty nests remind me of the power of patience. Patient power is evident in building safe nesting places, in skillfully waiting for what can't be hurried, in standing back as others accomplish what they must, in leading those same ones to untried edges and letting them go. Around me robins model their common routines of patience from tree and drainpipe.

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Miniature Promises

Nests are easy-to-spot signs of new life. I write about them with some frequency. Other indicators of an irrepressible commitment to life are more subtle. Above you see an old table covered with milkweed leaves. On these leaves are 43 viable monarch butterfly eggs and 6 larvae. A small number of us have spent the last couple of summers establishing a monarch waystation behind my house. A beautiful swirl of rich land was covered in thick black plastic much of last summer, a slow but less toxic method of killing the grass beneath. When the plastic came up, twenty-eight yards of mulch were spread to discourage future weeds, and then the first shrubs were planted. This summer soaker hoses have been buried in the mulch to get them beyond the sharp teeth of rabbits who chew on them. With all the pollinators in mind, there are now young lead plants, cone flowers, phlox, prairie drop seed, asters, liatris, little bluestem, butterfly weed, milkweed, and other native plants carefully placed in the soil. Those the rabbits have feasted on often still have stubs of growth attached to healthy roots. They are being dug up, potted, and nursed back to health for later replanting. An inventory of the yard today turned up the eggs and the larvae. One of us has a protected monarch nursery space where the eggs and larvae will reside until several stages later when they emerge from their chrysalises as adult butterflies. How glorious it will be to release them over the waystation. And today a tiny leopard frog hopped into sight. What a welcome appearance! Amphibians are the first to retreat when a habitat is unhealthy. Both the eggs and a frog are miniature promises of new life in a habitat growing richer for all of us.

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