22ºC

It’s spring! I’m sitting on the back patio drinking tea. The air is filled with birdsong, chirping, honking geese, and a fair bit of woodpeckering. It’s nice. A starling lands on a nearby branch and sings a little song to me. I imagine he’s wondering where the suet feeder has gone. I say, “Hello.” He says “Hello!” right back, followed by another little tune, and flies off. Starlings are famous mimics, but I was not at all expecting a wild bird to know hello. He must have a human friend somewhere.¹

I spent most of yesterday doing yard work and clearing the patio. I’ll be doing more of the same today. I neglected to rake the leaves properly in early fall. Then came cold, rain, snow, and ice for months on end. I plan to rake up a few more bags’ worth this morning. I may break down and purchase an electric leaf blower this fall. My brother is very against leaf blowers on principle, but he’s against most things on principle, and he hasn’t done a lick of yard work in twenty-five years anyhow.²

I also cleaned up some of the junk out back. The guy who owns the place hoards building materials for the future. He hasn’t lived here in many years, but plans to move back in when he retires someday. There are piles of bricks, pavers and rusted out metal fence posts stacked haphazardly all over the place. I’m moving them out of sight behind the garage. We also had 10 trashcans for two dwellings, seven of which were cracked or riddled with large holes (often both).³ The landlord doesn’t know what that’s about either. My guess is past tenants kept replacing the damaged trashcans without getting rid of the old ones.

I tried sowing some flower seeds, too. Despite the size of the yard, there isn’t much soil to be found. The owner built up the driveway and yard on a foundation of building debris and gravel for some reason. Presumably it was cheap. I’m more curious about the motive behind building it up at all. Looking at the level of the foundation and the lay of the land of the surrounding houses, it’s not easy to see what needed to be built up. I’m sowing tons of seeds despite the rocks and sand. I figure if the weeds and ivy always find a way, maybe a few flowers will manage to make it work as well.

Footnotes

1. I’m being literal here. The starling said the human word “hello” as well as any parrot would do (excluding African Grays of course), although in a very different timbre than a parrot. ↩

2. Having raked and bagged six more 30-gallon bags’ worth of leaves since I first wrote this earlier this morning, and left with at least as many leaves left to deal with tomorrow, I hereby declare that boy doesn’t know what he’s talking about when it comes to yard work. ↩

3. Squirrels. ↩