NEST... AND NESTLING

The craftsman, Ken, who has been working to replace a rotted section of the deck in the back yard of our Laguna Beach cottage spotted something we might otherwise have missed: a hummingbird has built her nest in the last remaining overhang of foliage on our poor, abused pepper tree--the one disfigured by the action of our uphill neighbor last year in the effort to improve his view.  (We had agreed to a trim: his hackers were about to slash down the entire tree before we discovered it and stopped them.  The link above will take you to the entire, outrageous history.)

Anyway, back to the happier news.  There remains this slowly recovering spray of greenery, and the hummer has found it a good spot for her nest.  It is a tiny structure...

... almost impossibly neat for its miniature size, not much bigger than a junction between the twigs.  Ken tells us that he has seen two tiny eggs nestled inside, but I have not dared to risk disturbing the mother bird to see for myself.  I remember that when we first bought this cottage, a hummer nested right outside our dining room window--but our proximity proved too much for her, and she abandoned her eggs.  We were devastated.  I'd love to set up a video camera some place close by and document the progress on this new one, but I wouldn't risk it--and besides, I'm a technological oaf.  Would not know how to set a camera up, much less to operate it.

And while we're at it, here's our other nestling... the human one, who was with us for our Luka Wednesday a couple of days ago.

In two days, he'll be seven months old.  And a few days further on, he'll be matching my years in months!  Ouch!  Ah, well!

We feel blessed by both.  New life is a special joy, to be celebrated at every moment.  When we get down, as happens--we have one of those familiar money panics going on right now, with the stock market plunging and Europe on the precipice, threatening to drag us all into the abyss--it behooves us to remember how fortunate we are.  And how meaningless is much that we worry about.