Morning Glories

Just when you least expect it, Nature gives you a pretty surprise.... purple Morning Glories.  They're growing up along the lattice fence by the chicken-coop-turned-cat-porch...... such pretty flowers reaching to the sky on vines that just won't quit.  And they're not only here in our yard, I've seen them growing all along the main highway and also in town, spreading their joy in purple bursts of randomness on fence posts, tree trunks, old tractors sitting in pastures, even 'stop' signs and light posts.  The morning glories are just decorating anything and everything they touch and it's making me wonder how they all got there in the first place.

I have seen packets of morning glory seeds in the garden centers of stores, but haven't bought any..... my luck with nurturing seeds is non-existent, so I don't even try.  I've heard that birds can eat flower seeds and then the seeds get digested and 'pooped out' at the birds' next landing spot.... so possibly, that's how our own morning glories got here.

We certainly have enough birds on this property..... the wrens have taken up residence in all of the wooden bird houses that the previous owner built..... and we have four generations of barn swallows that have built condo-sized nests all around our porches.  I've put out birdseed for these wild birds, but they haven't been interested...... they're into catching bugs and flies and gathering their own seeds out in the fields.  If the barn swallows would go after the crickets and the scorpions around here, I'd be perfectly content.

Every summer, we look up at those barn swallow nests and say they need to be scraped off the porch....... the baby birds have been fledged and are spending most of their time in the pecan trees now.  There are a couple of nests, though, that are still home to four of the baby barn swallows, so basically we've just left the  nests right where they are.                                                                   

Every evening before dusk, four of those birds come back and cuddle up into two of the nests.  Two birds in each nest, which is about all the room that nest will allow the full-grown birds.... and they sit there and watch me going back and forth as I feed the cats.  The baby birds don't even fly out of the nests when I walk by.  These four birds seem to recognize both me and my voice......... when they were tiny babies, I talked to them as I went by the nest, and they all sat there with big baby-bird eyes and listened. 

Now, as adult birds, they don't seem to be interested in getting out into the world and forming their own little families.  They just sit in those same two nests every evening, then huddle down as it gets dark.... and when I go out to feed the cats in the morning, I see their little heads pop up over the nests and then they watch me feed the cats and listen to me as I talk to them.

It has not escaped me that since moving out here to the Hill Country I'm rejoicing in finding hidden treasures of morning glories and talking to baby birds in nests on top of porch columns.   I remember rejoicing in SteinMart  back in Clear Lake when they had a sale on silk-covered high heels.......