I come from a long line of people who have spent a lot of time growing things. Not one summer of my life has slipped by without some discussion, detailed or just in passing, with some family member about the garden they are growing or the flower bed cared for with lots of time and love. Sad to say, and a bit ashamed to say, this piece of family know-how didn’t seem to make it down to me. Even a middle school stint in the Future Farmers of America didn’t help me that much in this regard. I just don’t seem to have the ability or patience to grow much of anything.
My wife is no help in all this either. She claims no green thumb. She tries and has succeeded with a few plants and some herbs but nothing very elaborate. We do try though at least on some small scale. Usually every spring, we bring home some baskets to hang on our porch. Usually somehow we end up allowing this plant life to slowly wilt away in summer’s heat. And yes, we do that even with ferns. Ferns seem to be pretty resilient. They stand a lot of heat, a lot of water and can stand some neglect. We speak from experience as we have made some nice ferns endure all three. This year four plants, two hanging baskets of petunias and two fern hanging baskets, came into our care.
While we can do enough damage on our own to hanging baskets we have found one other thing limits the growth of hanging baskets at our house. Birds, and in our neighborhood, we have lots of birds. The last few years we have been bombarded with birds from seemingly every direction and they seem to really like nesting in baskets hanging on our porch. No doubt the faulty workmanship on our chimney which allowed water to damage some siding probably also helped attract birds to our house. These winged foul would interrupt Sunday afternoon naps with their beaks bouncing off the outer shell of the chimney as they searched for bugs or as they tried to make enough of an indent into the crumbling exterior to create a hole where they might infiltrate and nest for awhile. It all was maddening and caused me to declare war on the birds in my yard although all I really could do was glare at them then snarl and plead with them to not do that anymore making me feel like a parent whose child has pitched a fit at the most inappropriate time and place while the rest of the world happens to be watching. Over this past winter, we remedied our bird problem with some extensive house repair. Since then, the neighborhood birds and I get along.
No doubt ferns everywhere were pleased with the great bird truce of 2010 as this likely increased their odds of surviving the long summer days on our porch. Surely, the thought must be that these two folks, minus the bird issue, can provide enough water and care to carry a fern’s life from scorching heat into fall’s first frost. And, honestly, we do try.
This year though, one fern is not going to make it much longer.
A few weeks back, I came home one evening and as I pulled into the driveway, rain began to fall. I rushed into the house past my wife and out to the porch. There, I lifted each hanging basket off it’s hook and sat each at the bottom of the steps so each basket could soak up some of the rain that was falling. As I placed the last basket, a fern, on the ground, I noticed a bird’s nest with three small blue eggs embedded underneath a secret veil of fern leaves. The rain began to beat down then so my instincts drove me back onto the porch and then into the house. There I began explaining to my wife the reason I rushed through the house to the porch was so that the hanging baskets might get some water this week. As an aside to her, I noted the one fern basket which a week or so earlier we realized housed a bird’s nest now had three small blue eggs in it. Jennifer then looked at me and asked me if I had left that basket in the rain. Sure, I replied, slow to grasp my own stupidity. I then walked into our living room. Through a window I saw a bird perched on the porch railing underneath where a fern hung moments earlier. The bird turned her head from side to side as if she were lost. Stupidity grasped. Without further thought I took myself out the door and into the rain where I retrieved the fern holding the bird’s nest and the three small blue eggs and returned it to it’s hook, safe on it’s perch from heavy rain or other enemies, such as human stupidity.
I have kept a closer eye on that fern and the nest since that evening. One day I noted two more eggs in the nest. Another day five tiny but ugly wads of birds were crammed into the intricate tangle of twigs and sticks constructed with a mother’s love. Now I watch that mother bird flit around the fern feeding five mouths while another fern slowly turns brown.
So, just in case you come by our house and upon inspection you see that the hanging baskets on our porch don’t look so healthy and you wonder why, well, now you know. We’re not that great with plant life, but we do try. And while our porch this year may not be quite as adorned as it could have been, I don’t mind. I understand that the sweet song of the birds speaking to one another in their native language has a beauty and richness beyond what any eye could ever see.
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