Scenes from a Brooklyn Garden [by Jennifer Michael Hecht]

IMG_4988 Among my favorite plants are vines and among my top vines are the cumbersome cucumber, because I love the way it yearns. See here, it has a yen for something solid. It reaches out a stringy arm into the blind darkness and waves it wafting until it strikes metal and then it winds, it toils, it becomes the essence of coil.  It is lace alive.

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I like photographs because I want a good long look. For instance, when I started taking pictures of the birds a
few weeks ago it was because of a confluence of becoming newly aware of where
I’d put my 400 lens since we’d moved and been raising these babies, and the
fact of these cardinals living in the backyards behind our apartment, a lovely
pair – her brown water-colored pink, him red as strawberry leather, with the
mask of Zorro — lately joined by a little guy, bright red and still getting
fed, flying around crazy and perching in cute places, and alla time chirp chirp
chirping.  This shows dad and mom.

I did not realize when I began snapping bird pics that I could make clicks of a bird such that its wide dark eye might be
caught inviting the world into the feathered mind. Once I found the trick was
an obtainable treat I went back to the yard for more.

Becoming picture-happy for the birds turns one into an avian
tracker, you get aware of where the pretty momma, the bopping cheeper, or daddy
big red might be hanging around. What an excellent student of them and the other birds I became. 

Then it occurred to me: Want to see the birds? Feed the birds. So I pulled out this birdfeeder that was hanging in the backyard when we moved in here and over a year ago I painted it and glued things on it and put it outside to weather but never had filled before and guess what? It works. Put out seeds, birds come. 
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I suspect the dino and the birds are fairly well aware of their common history and I enjoy their stance banter and the endless surprise of their relative size. 

Okay, well, same as always, stay alive until I have occasion to encourage you once again.

Love,

Jennifer

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