Reminder To Self. And About Birds.

Self, stop trying to write long and tedious posts just because you feel you should.  They all end up half-finished, gathering dust inside unused parts of your brain, inside your computer and on those odd coffee-stained and torn-up bits of paper.

Oh, hello there!

That was for me.  The long posts were supposed to be for you, my imaginary readers, on topics such as the representation of various groups of Americans in the current US Congress, what's wrong with current feminism according to Echidne, and other equally not-so-interesting topics.   I doubt they will ever be done, because of my stupid tendency of trying to chew more than anyone can digest.

But in any case, tl;dr should be the new slogan of this blog.  Tl;dr means that something is too long and so was not read.

Let's talk about birds.

I have begun gardening again, after a long break.  Hence my permanently black finger-nail linings.  As part of that gardening, I planted a clematis which is an infant, right now, but is one day expected to be a wonderful tall fountain of burgundy silk, frothy lace and inebriating perfumes*.  Think of garden porn.

Anyway, I put up twine for the baby clematis, as a hint about the most likely direction it should climb (up the arch) when it has gotten its root system plump enough, after recovering from the transplantation operation.

But a robin in the nest-building business wanted that twine.  She/he wanted it so much!  I laughed watching the sudden bird helicoptering, the wings going extremely fast while the beak hung onto the twine (which, sadly for the robin, was tied to the archway for the clematis).  I laughed when it backed up, with the twine in its mouth, pulling, pulling, pulling, until it fell on its tiny bird ass.

Then I felt guilty, and went out with about ten pieces of nice soft wool thread for the birds.  I left them right next to the clematis twine.   The robin came back, walked over all that nice wool, and returned to the battle with the clematis twine.

I ended up cutting that twine so that the robin could get it.  She/he later came back for all that wool, too, but only after the clematis twine had been taken.

Somehow I expected that birds would grab string by the middle and fly away with the ends flapping about in air.  But the robin gathered all the twine and threads up very neatly, into little folds, and flew away as if carrying a tiny suitcase.

I want to come back as a nest-building robin.

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*  It's much more likely that the clematis will expire.  But the hope is as big a part of gardening for pleasure as what actually happens.  The strawberries I've eaten in my imagination were mostly eaten by the birds, too.