trouble in paradise

 I was wondering about the adultery thing, whether it came before or after the Ten Commandments, I just went with it, knowing that our biblical scholar would set me straight. That thing about Isaac becoming the father of the jews and Ishmael of the muslims kind of threw me though, as at the time that the bible was being written there were no muslims.  Maybe Beagles means arabs, but still it doesn't sound like something that came out of the bible.  

Yoiks, killed outright by a bolt of lightning, and not even for masturbation but coitus interuptus, a stern god indeed, but then it makes you wonder if masturbation was ok?  Is it mentioned somewhere else in the bible?

But there is trouble in paradise, by which I mean my balcony.  When I lived in Texas I had a tiny little balcony in the back of my apartment which I loved, and so when I realized I was never going to get out of Chicago alive and went condo hunting, one of the things I looked for was a balcony.  Marina City certainly fit the bill in that the balconies are 180 sq ft, about a quarter again the size of the whole condo.  

This was great.  I had had a garden maybe fifteen years earlier in Champaign and it was great, but no place I lived after that had access to such a thing, and now here it was.  I put out maybe five pots the first spring after I moved in, and every year I added two or three more, and now they line the railing and are two deep in some places.

I grew tomatoes, hot peppers, a motley assortment of cheap flowers.  It was okay.  Even up here I got weeds, but I was generally pretty tolerant, as long as they didn't seem to be crowding my regular plants I let them live.  Maybe ten years ago I noticed a little fellow who once grown out of the pot reached for the railing and twined around and around it.  What manner of fellow was this?  On one of my walks through the city I came across a similar fellow twining around a fencepost, and when I traced the vine upwards there was beautiful flower, a morning glory.  

Well dadgum it, and maybe a week later my own little guy started putting out flowers, and flowers and flowers, like a machine gun one after another, because as I am sure the dawgs know a morning flower flower lasts but a day.  Anyway I was well pleased with him, and the next spring I was wondering if I should buy some morning glory seeds when bam, I saw them sprouting out all over my balcony, the sons and daughters of that first little guy who had spilled his seed all over my land of pots.  

Tough little guys too.  I likened them to the asiatic hordes on their short ponies, they gave the tomatoes, normally the big bullies of the garden a run for the money.  Bragging to my fellow gardeners about them, I noticed that their smiles had turned upside down to frowns.  Weeds, was the word that came out of their sneering mouths, goddamn weeds, if ever the devil spawn showed up in their edenic gardens they snuffed it out at first sight, and were ever vigilant against it.

Well you don't say, fuck them, I loved my morning glories.  Ladies love outlaws and Ken loves his morning glories.  

One spring I added sunflowers to my balcony flora, thinking how nice it would be to see the purple morning glories ascending the stalk towards the big yellow flowers.  And that worked out just fine, but there was another bonus, house finches.

They were attracted to the seeds in the sunflowers.  And when I saw them hanging around, of course I went out to the hardware store and bought a big bag of birdseed.  I have had them for about four years now.  Delightful little fellows and fellowettes, pretty of song and light on their feet.  I suspect they have somewhere else to dine because they come and they go.  This spring I was worried about them because of the covid.  The worry started with the pigeons, that whole world of city sidewalks once strewn with tasty human debris was now empty. and so now they would have to forage the feed of other birds who would now have to forage the feed of other birds, and up until my poor finchies must be having a tough time of it.

And sure enough when I put out the first flax sock of spring they were all over it, famished I assumed.  After a week or two they were plump and restless. hanging around for a few weeks, gone for a few, then back again, their usual pattern.

I was used to the regular pattern. so I didn't pay it much mind, but then maybe three weeks ago I noticed that they were back, and they seemed plumper, and there were more of them, seven or eight, while previously there had never seemed to be more than four or five, and instead of perching primly on the railing having a bite and then flying off, they were stomping all over the balcony and they were hanging out for it seemed like all day.

So I took a closer look and I discovered that they were sparrows, house sparrows!

To be continued