First, some silly stuff, and then a spiritual reflection…

They say crows are smart. I didn’t realize they’re also fussy eaters.

Each morning I add water to our bird bath, and lately it’s clogged with peanuts.  A crow keeps dropping nuts into the water and coming back, once the nuts are softened, to eat them. Where are the peanuts coming from? How many full-sized, shell-on peanuts can a bird want each day? Fistfuls, apparently.

I left my husband in charge of watering last weekend and when I returned from a family visit, the bird bath looked like this:

 

He’s hoping the wire will discourage nut drop offs. I think the crow has other ideas. This morning we found a gift on our patio table, right next to the bird bath.

 

More photos of my garden below, but first, a word of wisdom gleaned from the book Finding God In Ordinary Time, Daily Meditations by Christine Marie Eberle (I love this book).

Christine describes her joyful discovery, from day to day, the first spring after moving into a new house. Tulips. Strawberries. Lilies. Morning glories.

Oops. Morning glories, otherwise known as bindweed. What she took for a lovely, flowering vine began to crawl over and smother everything else in the garden. The lesson: root out the bad AND the good in order to preserve the best.

Or, in Christine’s words:

How to create space for the things we really value is a perennial question. Each day, we make choices about our time and attention. Ironically, the people and passions we cherish most require careful tending, while mindless pastimes tend to run amok effortlessly. Inevitably, a choice for one is a choice against another.

There will always be plenty of worthy things to compete for our attention. The least we can do is uproot the less worthy ones.

What needs to be uprooted, in your life, to leave room for the best?

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