On Porches, Decks and other Outdoor Living Spaces

On Porches, Decks and other Outdoor Living Spaces Ingerid Kelley

Living in Rochester, Minnesota, we had a house ten miles from town on five acres in the trees surrounded by farmland. On the drive from town, fields of soybeans and sweet corn grew. We had neighbors, close enough to see every day, but far enough away that one could feel lonesome looking over the rolling hills. Our home was a three story high, modern Anderson home with a crow's nest and had a beautiful deck in the canopy of trees. After the first winter there, my parents decided to glass most of it in. Winter or summer, we could sit on the deck and watch the birds. My mother became an avid bird watcher. Bird book in hand, she would sit by the windows where she placed birdseed and suet and watch for birds to check off, circle and dog tag in her bird book, The National Audubon North American Guide to Birds.

"What's that one!" we cried at a first sighting, and Mom would rapidly search through the book by color for the bird.

"Chickadee." She would reply. "A fearless, constantly active insect gleaner..." The lists piled up. White Breasted Nuthatch, Indigo Bunting, Rose Breasted Grosbeak, Orchard Oriole. We collected feathers when we could and were awed by our bookish collection.

I loved the chickadees for their fat, round dumpling-sized bodies, soft gray and white feathers and black capped heads. They were little and sweet. They came year around. The blue jays were voracious bullies. They'd chase off all the other birds, make a mess of the birdseed and clean us out. The squirrels made us laugh with the endless round about ways they would try to get into the feeders. Our bird feeders were magnificent contraptions made of PVC pipe designed to keep the squirrels out; we rarely succeeded for long.

Birds began to foreshadow changes in seasons. In fall, the Canadian Geese began their v-shaped trek to warmer climates. We saw the widest variety of birds in this season coming down from Canada as the weather became colder and colder. But, once winter came the most striking were the Cardinals.

The landscape of Minnesota lies under a quilt of snow, white and smooth. On sunny days, the crystals would sparkle off the trees, the fields and the icicles. The colder it was the brighter the crystals. Some days the sun never came out. The trees and forests were gray smudges on the flat, pristine snow. To see a male cardinal in winter in Minnesota is to remember color. Like the rush of blood on ice, a cardinal is striking. He flits from branch to branch drawing a crimson line as he travels. We searched for signs of cardinals in winter as a doctor looks for a pulse on a dying patient. The brilliantly cold season came alive again for us.

Winter in Minnesota is frigid, and the birds fly south. The warmer climates beckon and in New Mexico many find a more favorable resting-place. Contrary to some people's concepts of desert, Albuquerque is cold in winter. While the daytime temperatures rarely drop below freezing, the nights are cold, snow is possible and the environment closes down for the season. The Canadian Geese are there, making short daily trips from the Rio Grande to local grassy fields or the Bosque del Apache wetlands south of Socorro. A crane or a heron might be spotted along the river standing knee deep in the muddy water.

In Albuquerque, my Old Town patio was a little L-shaped brick space. It was overgrown with English ivy and morning glories. In the morning I would sit, drinking a cup of instant coffee, looking at the sky above the salt cedar that bloomed pink fuzz in the spring. The sound of Christian and Ray's fountain would burble its way toward me over the latilla fence. The view was limited and cozy. The birds did not pop in often. Christian and Ray's diamond-studded collared cat took care of that. Somehow, my itty-bitty patio offered endless possibilities for my limited first-year teacher's checkbook. I created potted wonders of plants. Lavender and artemis in one, mint and forget-me-nots in another. My gardener's heart began to bloom and the birds were left to the river.

Today, summer mornings on my porch while the Colorado air is still cool, the traffic is quiet, and the neighbors are still asleep, allow me rare moments of reflection. The sun rises east on my backyard so even at sunrise it's too warm and bright to sit there. Thus, my front porch, a little slip of a porch, becomes my morning spot. On my adirondack chair with a mug of English Breakfast tea (one teaspoon sugar and a splash of soymilk), I can absorb the scene contentedly.

My neighborhood on South Sherman Street is raucous at 6 a.m. The chorus, like the soft tone of altos, begins earlier than that with the cooing of the doves or possibly my backdoor neighbor's carrier pigeons. Then the higher notes, the soprano sparrows, twitter. The flutter of wings and the rattle of a woodpecker, sometimes on a telephone pole but more often on Dave's chimney pipe, come next. Mixed in this array are a few red breasted robins and a purple finch or two as well as the caw and cackle of the grackles, a black hearted, mean spirited bird with no known redeeming feature except it occasionally gives the squirrels hell, chasing them from tree to tree, and biting at their tails.

Besides being aurally assaulted and dragged out of bed by the verbose birds, I have frequently had the sad job of rescuing the grackles' young for the last two years. It's a conundrum, as every spring I find two or three dead or dying baby crackles who have been systematically tossed from their nest either by the squirrels or, my guess, their own parents. They are helpless, scrawny, gray-feathered chicks, impossible to save. Unable to fly, they cannot be restored to the nest nor placed on safe branches. They die slowly and I am left to clean their emaciated bodies up. Ironically, no one mourns them except myself, and if they had grown to adulthood, I'd be lamenting them for other reasons. But the variety of birds, lovable or otherwise, astounds me. Like my mother, my attention is arrested.