A Mother's Instincts

Spring is finally here, which means things are growing! Our backyard is quite responsive to the warmer temperatures and longer days, however, so we suddenly have bulbs, leaves, and, of course, weeds everywhere we look. In an attempt to control Mother Nature (and make our house more appealing when we sell it a year from now), we have been edging our scraggly lawn and have bark mulch being delivered any minute now. Yes, our weekend plans are already made. Anyone is welcome to come help spread mulch!

But the other evening, as we surveyed the edging we did and still have left to do, we had a lovely surprise in our back yard. Out from the bushes in the "Back 40" as we lovingly call the back of our lot, a mama duck and her babies appeared. We were both pretty surprised because our yard is surrounded by a chain-link fence. We have no idea where her nest was, maybe in the back corner of our lot, or perhaps in the drainage ditch on the other side of the fence. But here she came, determined to walk right out to our street. We opened the gate and out they waddled - six tiny ducklings following her. It was so cute, but also a bit bizarre, because they walked out our sidewalk, took a left onto our street, and we never saw them again. Let's hope they found some water somewhere!