ripe for the picking

Memories and reminders are everywhere.

Yesterday I passed a landscape worker as he was tamping a pile of loam (rich soil if you don't know) using the back side of a steel rake. Immediately I thought of my dad who'd worked so diligently on his lawn. He'd had his fill of vegetable gardens when he was growing up during the hardscrabble days of the Depression, so he preferred to cultivate a nice sea of green with occasional flowers providing accents.

And just a few minutes later I was settled in with the last of my morning tea when I noticed a young sparrow -- a fledgling with tufts of downy feathers -- on the railing outside. It had plumped itself down, no doubt exhausted by the effort it had taken to fly over here, and soon another sparrow hopped over to place seeds from my feeder into his/her gaping mouth. I'd figured that if the young 'un had managed to get that far that it would be able to feed itself, but there she was -- the eternal mom -- helping out. I'm not sure how old the chick was in bird years, but laughed at the possibility that I was witnessing the avian version of the boomerang generation -- once moved out of the nest but now returning. Made me wonder how long a mother is a mother. Always is probably a pretty good estimate. My mom still was -- still is -- and my friend as well.

Yeah, memories are everywhere, just ripe for the picking.