Time out for a nature break

Life overwhelming? Take a nature break!

I'm feeling a little overwhelmed lately. With my sister sick and in the hospital and some other major issues I'm not sleeping very well and the temptations to anxiety are many and frequent. I spent yesterday on the road leaving home at 8:30 in teeming rain to make a 10:15 appointment in Chantilly, then on to Frederick Memorial Hospital an hour away to visit my sister, then back to Winchester to COSTCO, and finally home to make dinner. Whew!

I consider my car a little chapel and said two rosaries on the road as well as taking some silence breaks between finishing a book on CD and listening to talk radio. I can only stand so much noise.

Today, however, it's time for a nature break!


So this morning I'm watching the bluebird. When we arrived back from Texas the front had fallen off the bluebird box. I guess the screw hole is stripped. Inside was a lovely little nest with small blue eggs. I feared the mama had abandoned the too-exposed nest. So I put the front back on and Larry strapped a bungee cord around it. I watched. For a day, but observed no activity at all.

Would the mama bird return to her eggs?

I read that bluebirds don't start to incubate the eggs until they are all laid so the babies will hatch at the same time. That encouraged me to continue watching with the expectation that mama might return to raise her brood. And the next day I saw her head popping out of the hole. So now I wait eagerly to see the babies arrive and fledge. Their gestation takes 12 to 14 days so I probably have awhile to wait, but anticipation is a pleasure. I love seeing her and her mate busy about a bluebird's daily activities.

In the past we had a bear visit and destroy a nest so I'm asking all the nature patrons (St. Isisdore's feast day is this week) to guard the bluebirds and bring the babies to birth.

This morning a chickadee decided the house looked inviting and stopped at the door only to be told very definitely that the home was taken and not to let! The unhappy perched for a minute in the pine tree behind the house, then moved out front and sat disconsolately on the apple tree for a little while before flying away, presumably to find another domicile to raise her own family.

How can anyone look at the wonders of nature and not see God's fingerprints? How can a bluebird be more concerned about her babies than a human mother? How can grandmothers fight for the right of their daughters to kill their grandchildren? I confess it baffles me. How I wish they had the morals of a bluebird.

Please pray for our baby birds to make it through the hazards of gestation to reach birth. Believe me, I'm not just talking about bluebirds.

Our Lady of Life, pray for us!