Nesting

It was a cool dew covered morning and I went out at about 6:30 to mulch the garden. It's rained at least an inch in the last couple of days and we took a delivery of one hundred bails of straw left over from the Symphony in the Flint Hills. Weeding is easy and with plenty of straw at my fingertips, I'm in gardener heaven. As I finished in the strawberries and moved over to the watermelons (healthy seedlings now become hearty adolescent vines, courtesy of neighbor Kenny), I was surprised by a lark sparrow darting out of the weeds and up into the air. Thinking not much of it I made a bed of straw around one watermelon vine and moved on to the second. There at the base of the plant, surrounded by the meager amont of straw that I'd placed there about 3 weeks ago, was a birds nest, about 5 inches in diameter with four tiny white eggs inside.

Up on the electric wire mama lark watched as I carefully pulled the weeds around her home, made a fresh, ample bed of new straw, and then quietly went on with my day.