Empty Nest

I worked in the backyard yesterday. The day before, we walked by a house that was busy doing honeysuckle eradication. It is an invasive species that seems to thrive in Saint Louis. At this other house, mountains of honeysuckle branches had been culled. I was inspired to do the same at home. Next to the back porch, we have a euonymus bush that hides the A/C unit and gives us some privacy, when we sit on the porch’s swing. Unfortunately, the dreaded honeysuckle has infiltrated it, but fortunately, the honeysuckle is now in bloom and even though the euonymus is also blooming, there different flowers are distinct enough for even me to tell them apart. After I had finished cutting back all of the offending blossoms, I too had a mountain of honeysuckle branches. I then had to cut up these long and spindly branches to fit them into our yard waste cart for this week’s pickup. There is still more honeysuckle to cut in the yard, but that will have to wait until after the cart is emptied. I have all summer to do it and I won’t need its flowers to tell it apart in this other spot, because I’ll be clear cutting it.

While trimming the honeysuckle, I found the pictured bird’s nest. Fortunately, it was an empty nest, because otherwise, I would have had to suspend work. When we bought this house, we inherited a honeysuckle tree. I say tree, because it was big enough and woody enough to be one. When Anne spoke of it once to her mother calling it a tree, Gene took exception to that label, “Honeysuckle is not a tree.” Anne responded with, “If it’s big enough for the boys to climb, then it is a tree.” I eventually eradicated that “tree”, but not before it spawned more sires.

We’re enjoying a quiet holiday by ourselves. Anne broke into our Zingerman’s hoard, by trying its sour cream coffee cake for breakfast. After which, I started cooking dinner. We’re having a roast that is in the crock pot for the day. I am attempting to duplicate the takeout roast that we had earlier this week for Anne’s birthday. That roast was so tender you could have eaten it with a spoon. It will be accompanied by roasted asparagus. This is the first Mother’s Day, where both of our mothers have now passed, making for a bittersweet holiday and like the empty bird’s nest, we too now have an empty nest of our own. That’s life though. As I write, I can hear the little birds that like to roost in the euonymus bush. They sound totally unfazed by all of my labors of yesterday.