' Summer's gone but a lot goes on forever. '

A Black-capped Chickadee has been hovering around the autumn remants of my little slab garden the past couple of days. This guy keeps flitting from bamboo sticks to tall plants to somewhere so near the window it seems he might gotten in somehow. Today I took a better look and found my feathered friend's focus -- the dried seeds from the mini-sunflower Caroline gave me at the beginning of the season. Of course, I overwatered the plant and, alas, it would certainly have lived longer in the deep dark earth. . .luckily I had the foresight to capture it on film before execution day. Then I had absent-mindedly stuck it behind my 'gate' to dry. Chickadees are a favorite of mine and I was delighted to know they hang around Minnesota year round. Their dee-deeing reminds me of an experience I had many years ago. That's a story for another day, but suffice it to say that when I hear them I know God is watching over me.

Speaking of birds, I heard about a community garden called the Hua Mei Bird Garden in the Sara Delano Roosevelt Park in New York City's Chinatown. It seems that early each morning, Chinese men bring songbirds, including the garden's namesake, the scrappy little Chinese Hua Mei, in fancy bamboo cages. In 1993 legend has it that three Chinese men hung birdcages between two trees in this park because they wanted to establish a bird garden like the ones in their homeland. A segment on NPR's All Things Considered in August includes some of the sounds in the park on a Saturday morning.

Enchanting.

"On weekdays, a dozen songbirds can be heard in the park, on weekends as many as 50. Most of the men who come to listen to them are retired; the oldest are in their late 80's. We are old men. We like bringing the birds and drinking the coffee. We feel better.” (NYTimes-July/2007)

A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song. Chinese Proverb

Happy Weekend!