Nesting.

Can you feel it?
Actually, I can't hear you. Once more:
CAN YOU FEEL IT?!!!

IT'S HERE! SUMMER IS HERE! How did I ever leave this place?! Summer here is amazing!
I have literally been doing my happy dance for the last two days because of the sun. Garrett has recently seen my "the paint job looks so awesome" dance - but the "summer is here to stay" dance definitely has a little more spunk to it.

All of us here at the Howe Home have been working tirelessly in the past few days, inside and out. Chris has finally been able to get to the bottom of his clothes that are too small, back to the times when he was still a size medium (let me tell you, those days are far behind us); Dad has been motivated to tackle some more outside related jobs, Garrett managed to get most of the painting DONE!, and I've been working alongside Chris and enjoying being outside as well.

Chris had so much stuff in his room, that each time I'd come in, he would have discovered another batch of reminiscent articles: a purple wife beater, a red bandana, suspenders, and three dollar sunglasses. Of course he would be wearing them all in fashionable combination. Then, he'd take a break and watch his favorite old show, Stargate SG-1, and make comments about how awful the newer Stargate Atlantis is. (I must admit though, I definitely notice too that Atlantis is worse than the original).

So the other day when Garrett and I were working in the living room together, me pulling things off the wall and TSPing and he filling holes, we somehow(e) got to talking about the particular small animals that make us skittish. In other words, I was telling him how even though mice don't scare me, everytime I see one, I accidentally scream. I promise you, my reaction is truly accidental. Anyway, in response, Garrett proceeds to tell me that he's totally scared of birds. See now, I think being scared of birds is a funny thing to be scared of, probably only because there's lots of them everywhere! Much to Garretts misfortune, we've had an unusual number of birds fly into the house in the past week. Needless to say, Chris and I have been doing all the rescuing. A fun childhood memory to say the least! Yesterday as I was walking out the front door I discovered why there were so many birds flying into the house! I'm going to show you this picture and then you can guess where the story is going . . .

Any Guesses?

To add to this story, Dad sort of forgot to take down the hanging baskets last year, so they've stayed up all winter. That's the slightly hideous/more dead than anything thing in the picture. SO, I'm walking out the front door, and I see a bird flying away from this old hanging basket and in about a milisecond my brain goes: ohmygodthosebirdsarenestingtherewhichmeansthatheremustbeBABYBIRDSinthere! And what do you know, I was right! We have baby birds nesting in the hanging basket on the front of the house! I investgated further for you in picture form, of course.

Where are you little birdie babies?!

There you are!

You can't even imagine how excited I am! So excited, that Chris can tell you on more than one hand how many times I've asked him if I told him about the baby birdies. And this was only yesterday morning.

Because we were thinking about baby birds, Dad and I decided we should clean out all of our bird houses to make room for more nests. Enter exhibit 2: the bird house that was so full, that a bird definitely wouldn't be able to fit through the hole! We obviously had to clean this one out.

So we take the house down, and as I bring it to the table to take the bottom off, I notice a bee flying around. You quickly can see where this whole thing is going . . .

And then another bee appears out of no where. All of a sudden I notice a bee climbing OUT of the bird house. Cleverly, I tap the side of the bird house ("is anybody home?"). Response: As one might guess, a chorus of baby bees being woken up. Thankfully Dad is always within earshot of me calling for help. We decided that instead of evicting the bees, we would kindly relocate them to a different tree until the winter time.

THEN, Dad went on the roof to get another swallow bird house and we almost disturbed a mummy sitting on her eggs! We put the house back in its place pretty quickly! You can imagine what a day of fun we had! Baby birds EVERYWHERE! So exciting.

Today was also pretty productive. Like I mentioned, Garrett for the most part finished all of the painting yesterday. It looks great!

This picture is showing how there are no holes where the wainscoting once was! Garrett actually patiently filled most of the holes twice to make sure that they didn't show up after painting was finished. Amazing! :)

My biggest accomplishment of today was cleaning up the deck and putting together some hanging baskets in completely summer style! Fun!

Before

Ready for Hanging!

Now if you remember earlier in this post I mentioned that we had some baby birdies hanging in one of the baskets. We decided that we'd a. monitor the nest (that was dad's idea) and b. wait until they flee (is that the right word?) the nest to put up a less-than-dead basket. For now, it looks funny. Maybe more cute when you know the story behind it.

See? Cute, right?!

Thanks for helping Dad!

I called this post 'Nesting' for obvious reasons. Escapades with birds to our extent do not happen like that in the city of Edmonton where I live. I totally miss having non-domesticated animals around! (I'll be sure to put get a picture of a deer for you next time). But on a completely related plane, as those birds need to nest, so do I! Here! In this house! In some way! Maybe not in a dead hanging basket, but in some way! Putting together those new hanging baskets today was part of that way. Each little part of every day recreates this nest for me. It's already been a totally amazing transformation!

Originally I was going to end the post here, but I caught a little something extra for you tonight!
Because I enjoy having birds around so much, I've put a few feeders out on the deck for them, hanging from trees. In the past racoons have liked to climb the trees and try to get a snack. One night last week they were successful, but since then I've managed to outwit them. But although I've outwitted them, they still try. So sitting here upstairs writing this post with the window open, I can hear the little devil swatting at the roof of the feeder trying to get some food. And he's (she's?) got nerves too! It came back a second time after it thought I had left!

First question I have to ask: should we name him in case of future encounters?

Walk of shame . . .

On the plate for tomorrow: exclusive garden love! Excited!