Are you my mother?

One summer my mother, my daughter Emily and I were visiting family in Nova Scotia. My Uncle and Aunt live in a little town outside of Yarmouth. Local men build birdhouses with scraps of wood from the shipbuilding yards.

My mom had brought me home a few of these houses in past years but of course, I wanted more. As we drove around the spectacularly beautiful countryside we kept our eyes peeled for birdhouse vendors. The collection in the back of my SUV grew to the point that we could not open the back hatch for the customs inspector at the border. I could only open the windows for the man to stick his head in the car as I was afraid the houses would all tumble out and we'd never fit them back in.


It never occurred to me that when I came home I'd have to find spots for all these houses. One house was plopped right on top of a stump in our parking area. It wasn't the smartest place to put the house as birds moved in almost immediately and when we parked there they'd go flitting about.

The same with the bird house on my bicycle. It looked so pretty there but I couldn't weed that part of the garden without disturbing the residents. I had never thought of that in advance.

One day I saw some movement around the house on the stump and realized that the babies were leaving the nest. At first they scampered up to the roof and I had time to run and grab my camera.

Suddenly one got bold and jumped and flapped it's little wings. Hooray! It flew to the next stump, about 5 feet away.

When I saw this scene I immediately thought of the Dr. Seuss book "Are you my mother?" where the little bird goes on an adventure looking for it's mother.

And no, I didn't buy this plastic gnome. While I have some really nice garden gnomes, this one is pretty cheesy and somebody actually dumped it on my front lawn!

So choose your birdhouse locations with care and don't forget, have your camera ready to capture those Kodak moments.