little birds, out on my doorstep

This is our quaint little house.  Our quaint little house that we've toiled over the past nearly three years. Scraping, painting, demolishing, replacing, sweeping, cleaning.



This is our newly finished front stoop. Our newly finished front stoop that we have really enjoyed resting on, while eating ice cream sandwiches, when we're not scraping, painting, demolishing, replacing, sweeping and cleaning.



These are our happy and vibrant plants. Our happy and vibrant plants that I saw in Walmart and was drawn to like a moth to the flame.  I'd gone in to purchase Claritin-D and came out with these plants, instead.



I think they're called Kalanchoe Calandiva ... something or other.  But I just call them KC.



When I bought these annual plants last month, I had every intention of removing them from their plastic containers (which were wrapped with decorative yellow cellophane) and potting them. But, you know what they say about the road to hell being paved with good intentions.   Six weeks later, whenever I walk past them (every single day), I feel this nagging that I just need to STOP what I'm doing and pot the plants already.  And yet... I don't for reasons that have eluded me.

Last Sunday, Mother's Day, we removed everything from the front stoop so we could hose it down. As Charlie was removing our KC plants in their crinkly wrappers from the ceramic pots, he asked me if I was ever planning to pot these plants?  "Sure," I said. "One day. Hopefully before fall. Unless we just embrace the lovely subtlety of the disposable yellow plastic and keep them that way all summer!"

We laughed.

And then we noticed that there was a nest in the ceramic pot.



A nest ... which had been constructed beside the plants and was contoured around the disposable plastic container and had been protected beneath the bright yellow cellophane. We stood in amazement at this tiny creation.  It's a miracle to us that a little bird that probably weighs no more than a pound, can create something that is so precisely engineered.  We have tried to construct bird nests before with our children and they never turn out very well.



And yet here, hidden behind the plant that I was supposed to pot last month, was a perfectly constructed nest with five perfectly spotted little eggs.

Sparrow, we think.

Had I actually potted this plant, it's unlikely that a mama bird would have found this to be the ideal place to construct her nest and lay her precious eggs.

So I like to think that this is a perfect example of the Universe showing me that every so often, the To-Do list really is for the birds.