Changing Of The Guard

Our new neighbors have neighbors

Our house is under contract and in a few short weeks will be in the much younger, sweetly eager hands of the new owners, a couple from Brooklyn who won us over with a charming note about the record collection and bookshelves. Apparently notes to accompany offers are a thing these days but it touched us - no immediate plans to GUT IT or if there are we don’t ever need to know about them.

It’s odd living in a house staged to show. There’s no need to stage anymore— the deal is pretty much done—but as tempting as it is to start dragging all our old familiar crap out of the garage where it’s boxed up to be shipped and put it back where it belongs, I know that makes no sense. So I live like a lady in a hotel or Airbnb, adjusting every chair, wiping every scuff; keeping my makeup and toiletries in a travel bag. The change is happening, can’t fight it. Although I have had to take a guitar or two back out of their cases, and fire up my screenprinting setup one more time. Still dumping and packing, but the intense part will have to wait til Eric comes back in a week or so.

Yes change is on the wing, literally. That is, our neighbors have new neighbors, before these fresh buyers even move in.

A family of cardinals have set up camp here in the backyard.

One of the wonderful and also impossible things about this house has been the backyard. When we first moved in Eric likened it to “a country park” and as much as I’ve loved the space and trees back there, sometimes I wished it was municipal  grounds. I’ve written many times about mowing and grappling with all the poison ivy, hornet stings, tick-borne Lyme disease I’ve suffered over our years here. This was the house we could afford when we moved to America and it just happened to come with a nice big backyard. Maybe because the yard backs onto another street, it’s always felt a little like having two front yards ie you’d have to fence the whole thing in to be able to just let things slide back there.

But I’ve liked the feeling of accomplishment that came with finishing a mow - the tidy green rows marked out horizontal or diagonal across the yard —as much as I sometimes resented having to do it. I’ve gotten so much joy from sitting out back on cool summer mornings. The squirrels dash around like crazy, running up the massive trees, chasing each other. Woodpeckers peck, robins swoop and then stop and stare, a regular Disney cartoon. Every now and then I’ve seen a flash of blue from a bluebird or a redbird, my favorite. But that was a once in a while thing.

I noticed the beginnings of a nest over the garage window when I got back from England on Thursday. I recoiled at first because last summer it was a hornet’s nest that took shape there and grew and grew to the point where we had to get a guy in full beekeeper’s regalia to come and take it down. I’ve stayed in Motel 6s like that, scary activity going on at all hours, and it was just not possible to co-exist mere feet from the potential danger. The pest guy stood a respectful eight feet back and launched an evil spray like the Terminator and then the thing evaporated like it was made of tissue paper. I felt a little sad for messing with nature, but only a little.

But this recent nest — well I noticed there was some movement going on in there, and realized it was a cardinal. He (she?) sat very still, very regal, like a Buddha or a queen, big watchful eyes fixed on the landscape somewhere beyond the far side neighbors’ picket fence. I wondered if the bird was even real —maybe some realtor trick to drum up interest? “This’ll rook (I mean..er, card haw haw) those city folk!” The bird sat and sat, until I tapped on the window, and then it took off across the yard, fully red and alive. Another one appeared soon after in the nearby lilac bush. Now there are constant red flashes in the lilac bush and up into the taller trees. And every time I check the nest, there she sits. Resting? Just being. She’s made her home and that’s that.

I think what makes this such a likely spot for nests is the work of the house’s previous owner. The guy was in love with hooks, clips, flagpoles, brackets; pulleys. He must’ve either worked at Lowe’s or the local Ace hardware store or spent every waking hour there. Metal jar lids nailed or screwed to a board fixed to a ceiling where you could screw your jars filled with more…nails or screws. Miniature fans affixed to window frames. He’d (I’m sorry, it had to be a he) put three different spotlights with sensors in a to him obvious spot on the garage, so that when you walked out the back door to the yard it was like trying to escape a high security prison or Stalag 17 - “halt! who goes there?” The light(s) would glare on.

Over the years the light fixtures have loosened from the spot just under the gutter, providing a perfect framework for …the beginnings of nests.

This one is not a tidy, tightly woven affair - just loose strands of straw tumbling here and there, kind of like Stevie Nicks’ hair on a day off. A nest in keeping with the ramshackle charm of this house, built by a bird after my own heart.

The GUT IT people will never know the odd joy of just leaving things as is and watching what happens. True we’ve often felt overwhelmed and like “one day, when we have time we should really get around to…” Eric has spent many many hours addressing the glaring things that needed to be addressed in the house while I tried to come to grips with the outside - the plastic bags used as weed barriers, the invasive plants and fallen branches. Now it’s all someone else’s cozy yet spacious unelevated hill to climb.

But the cardinal? I can’t say what will happen to the nest. If we were staying it might be a problem to solve - maybe we’d want to spruce up the old garage, replace the window or paint it and we’d have to move the nest. Maybe this next family will have energy for all the tasks - or the wherewithal to pay someone else to take them on-or even tear it all down. It’s not our place to say.

I don’t doubt the cardinal knows we’re leaving and has established residency as a kind of blessing: to us, to the new people. This beautiful red bird reminds me to take it all in, what we had here for over a dozen years; how important it is to pause a moment and honor the changing of the guard. Sure I have a fridge of old condiments to empty. But the cardinal says “Eh, how long does it take to dump some siracha? Hang out for a little while.”

(Note: Duh, I just saw a baby bird’s head poke up from the nest! That makes total sense. Life really does just keep carrying on, doesn’t it?)