16 March 2012

A bird's nest and a daffodil

Day before yesterday I noticed a bird's nest that I hadn't noticed before. I've walked by it, withing 10 feet of it, so many times that I couldn't count them. And then suddenly one day, there it is. Selective vision, I guess.

A nest is a nid [NEE] — un nid d'oiseau — in French.

The nest is sitting on a grape vine trunk up against the vine-workers' shed out on the gravel road. I wonder if the birds that built it, or their offspring, will use it again. I hope they'll have an easier time spotting it than I did. It's not very far off the ground.

The nest is perched on a vine trunk up against a south-facing
wall. It must be warm when the sun is shining.


Daffodils, par contre, are harder to miss. It's their color. They are starting to open up all around the house and out in the back of the yard. The extreme cold we had in February doesn't seem to have hurt them.

A daffodil in French is une jonquille [zhõ-KEE-yuh] — a jonquil.

I've been thinking about all the walking I do with the dog. It's so pleasant when the weather is like this: not too cold, not too hot, not windy, and not rainy. I figure I walk an average of 2.5 kilometers every day. Some days less, but some days a lot more. At that rate, I walk more than 800 kilometers in a year's time, or about 500 miles.

3 comments:

  1. Daffodils and tulips are my favourite flowers, mostly because you get them when winter is thankfully over. A single daffodil can cheer me up no end so a whole bed of them is a total joy.

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  2. How beautifully that nest is placed, so as not to disturb the symmetry of the vine.

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  3. That's quite a good bit of walking -- good for you!
    We have lots of jonquilles in our garden, all over the front of the house, thanks to the plantings of the previous owner. It looks mighty spring-like :))

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