Watching for Signs of Spring in the Garden

Spring in southeast Texas is definitely earlier than most part of the country. Trees are starting to bud, plants are slowly recovering from the harsh winter. Many of our plants that we thought were gone are beginning to show signs of life.  Like many other gardeners we began the process of cutting back the dead stems and branches of the plants, the bigger the garden the longer it takes.  It always amazes me how many plants we have growing in a normal size yard, it seems that the cutting back will never end, then suddenly you are down to just one more plant.

The moral of this tale is: Be Careful Before You Whack That Plant!!!

The plant in question is our Mexican Flame Vine, it grows up a homemade trellis in the back yard next to the house. Just before we began to cut it, a male Cardinal flew out of the tangled mess. My husband looked under the dried, brown, stems and there was a perfectly formed nest with the female sitting on it. The nest is in a perfect location, the outdoor light is behind the vine and therefore produces heat that has kept the nest warmer.

As the weeks have moved on  we have watched the unfolding of a family. We now know that there were at least 3 eggs being kept warm in the nest. We’ve been able to watch the activity from inside the house, the nest is just outside a small window, giving us a perfect view of nature at her best.

We’ve seen the tiny birds emerge from their shells, watched as the female feed them, watched both parents gather food from our yard and return to feed the brood. They grew so quickly,  today we heard loud chirping from the parents and thought something was wrong, instead it was a day of teaching the babies to fly!

We watched as they slowly found that their wings worked. It is fun to see how the parents kept up with the newly fledged trio. I was reminded of teaching our children to drive, lots of chaos!  It was so wonderful to see the tiny birds learning to fly, they stayed near the house and flitted short distances from chair to table to stairs, each leg of the journey getting longer and their wings getting stronger.

As stated above during this time of year, Be Careful As You Work In The Garden, you never know what surprise awaits you , look around and see what may be hidden.

What have you seen this spring? How is your garden recovering? What has survived? Do you have any plants that haven’t shown signs of regrowth?

This entry was posted on 5 April 2010 at 08:45 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.