No Happy Post Today

The storm has passed but we still have cool weather in its wake.  I untarped the strawberries, tomatoes and peppers and they appear to be just fine.  The strawberries were standing up tall reaching for some light, so it was definitely time to uncover them.  We'll tarp them again tonight and then, as temps warm starting tomorrow, we'll hopefully be able to leave them uncovered permanently.

What I'm sad about...REALLY sad about right now is that I checked on Daisy Bill, the baby dove, and he didn't survive the storm despite my fashioning him a shelter and straw nest.  I think it was probably a combination of the extreme cold and mama Dove not feeding him because of the weather.  I really was pulling for the little bird and am now second-guessing myself that I should have brought him in and put him under the brooder light.  It's a grim reminder that we are all here at the whim of Mother Nature, cruel mistress that she is.

J. thinks I'm silly to care so much for a wild bird, but I've been that way all my life.  I sometimes joke that I like animals more than people, but there's probably more truth than joke in that statement.  Of course, J. has learned to put up with it.  Several Mother's Days ago, when we were rebuilding our front porch, we discovered a nest of baby sparrows.  It was hotter than tarnation and we were exhausted, but I couldn't bear to destroy those babies just because they were in our way.  And it seemed to me that we would be asking for a whole double truckload of bad karma if we killed them on Mother's Day.  So we stopped what we were doing and made a makeshift bird house out of some scrap lumber, moved the nest into it and hung it on the front of our house.  J. grumbled the whole time.  But the mama bird found her babies and fed them until they grew up and left that nest.  Then we took it down and finished our project.  Like I said, I'm a big softy - especially for baby animals.

Later today, I'll bury Daisy Bill's little body in the backyard next to the beloved dogs that we've lost.  Just seems like the right thing to do.