Time for Planting

This past Memorial Day weekend, we decided it was time to plant our garden. Paul took one look and determined that it was way too lumpy and needed a better seed bed than he could prepare with just the walk-behind-tiller. He asked me to help him hook one of his tractors to the disk so he could run through the plot a couple times and smooth it out.

This is what a disk looks like all folded up.

I walked over to the disk and yelled at Paul to stop backing up the tractor. He jumped down out of the cab and came over. I pointed to a problem. There, propped on top of one of the folded up disk wings was a robin sitting on her nest, looking a bit nervous.

I told him, "If you unfold the disk, the nest will fall out...I'm sure she's got eggs in there. We better not bother her."

I was kind of surprised but he agreed that we didn't want to disturb the little family. I figured we'd just have to wait a week or so until the babies were gone.

Here's the nest...can you see the mom sitting there...scared to death? Poor thing!

Then, Paul had a brilliant idea. (He gets those sometimes.) He suggested that we lift the nest off the disk and place it temporarily on the digger that was parked close by. Then we could work the garden, bring the disk back and return the nest to its place.

That's just what we did. While I was busy moving her nest, the mama robin flew nervously overhead chirping and calling. I kept telling her it would be okay. But, she disappeared. I was hoping she'd stick around and watch where I set her nest down while we used the disk, but she didn't.

Here's what I found in the nest as I was moving it. Not too cute, are they?

We finished our work and carefully put the disk back into its place all folded up and neat, just the way it was. I moved the nest with the ugly, naked, fuzzie critters back to the exact spot they were before we invaded their world.

I thought maybe the mama wouldn't come back to her mobile home after all the craziness.

So I waited and watch....and she came back!

I'll probably check back in on her in a few days to see how the naked little uglies are doing.
For now, I'll leave the little family alone. I've caused them enough stress.