Requiem for the Trees ...

Where'd the light go? I am feeling the effects of these gray lady mornings we've had the past week. They make me sad, when I look out: gray days leach the light out of everything. And I'm sad because there won't be many birds this year, and little wildlife in my world.

Unfortunately, my mother got a burr under her saddle last winter and had ALL of the trees cut down. I was livid when I found out: there are no places to nest, and nowhere for the bunnies and squirrels to hide, anymore. She's 81, and crotchety, so I should expect things like this, but - oh, how I HATE the loss of the trees.

My mother called my sister to collude and they had it done whilst I was away from the homestead. The place looks like a clear-cut forest aftermath - stubbly, stumpy, and exposed. No more shade and few nests anywhere, SIGH.

The robins HAVE come back (and the cardinals never left - they moved into the shrubbery!), and have begun their yearly scavenger hunt for twigs, grass, twine, and the yarn scraps we drop around the yard, for nest building.

We started dropping yarn scraps for the birds, when my sister's girls were little. They loved sitting with Dad, watching the spring dance our feathered neighbors play out every year, especially when the babies came. One year, a cardinal's nest fell from one of the bushes and the eggs went everywhere. The girls tried to save them, but when they could not (busted), got the idea to shore up the bird's nest and place it back in the tree.

The cardinals screamed, flapped, fussed, then accepted the gaudy thing after rebuilding it and weaving in the colorful scraps, but laid no more eggs that spring. The next year, the girls laid yarn 'strings' all over the yard after the first thaw. All of the birds grabbed some and wove them into the nests - it's been a regular thing for the family, and for our featherheads, since then.

I've put some out, they're not being used yet, but I live in hope that some of the birds will find somewhere to call home in what's left of our little forest. I'm sick about it - many of those trees were part of my, and my sibs', childhood: we and the trees grew up together.

For example, there's the fir we dug up at Lake Eufala with a spoon (it was four inches tall when we got it, and 30 feet tall when my mother destroyed it), the juniper from my grandparents' front yard, the scrub maple we pulled up at the foot of an old oak tree near Guymon, and the mimosa we planted all over the yard in 1969, from seed we saved from the tree at our old house. And then there are all those old gaudy nests ... All gone. Even the native rose vines and my father's rose garden were sacrificed. I hated the thorns but the roses were sweet. Some were rare - all gone, all gone.

I especially loved the mimosa: they smelled wonderful when they bloomed, and I didn't mind the trash from the blossoms - we just raked it up and went on. But there's to be no more of that ... The yard will grow back someday, probably when I'm ancient and about to depart the mortal plane, but all things come in time ...