Dear Curiosity Journal,
Just outside the farmhouse door, our morning glory trellis experiment is giving “Secret Garden” vibes. I remember being captivated by this story as a child, my imagination running wild with a botanical backdrop, so it feels surreal to cultivate something similar here. There is a family of house wrens cohabitating with us in this space. Their nest is literally tucked inside a hole in the siding next to the front door. So, every time we walk outside, they also make a dramatic exit from their roost to the trellis, disturbed by the quaking of the closing door. They seem to be obsessed with the morning glory trellis. One of them is always perched on the top beam, weaving their small brown body in and out of the verdant vines and violet blossoms, posting up, and belting out a song that seems too grandiose and effervescent to come from such petite, plain featured fowl. When I told Rufus that I was talking to one of them and they came closer and tilted their head toward me, he shared that he has also been talking to them everyday, hypothesizing that this is the reason the wrens seem to be listening to us. They give the impression of being almost domesticated in their curious dismissal of human threat, only flying away when we come within arm’s length. This funny friendship with the birds pulls on another thread from “The Secret Garden”. In the story, a robin had started singing to Mary and she felt that he understood her, and it made her quite happy, less lonely. The robin sat on a branch within the locked garden, and his voice was one of the catalysts which cracked open her curiosity about what else was inside the walled garden. These sweet storybook synchronicities make me smile.
~Joy
