dual personalities

Today, a guest post from DN!

One of the highlights of our home is a space we call the backroom—a three- or four-season Florida room (depending on the year) attached to the rear of the house. In the winter, the backroom’s windows help us feel that we’re getting enough sun. In the summer, the room is a great way to escape air conditioning and feel a little humidity on our skin. But spring is when the backroom really shines. There is so much life to see.

Although we haven’t seen any eggs, we think that they are in there. Every time the robin returns to the nest, she performs a side-to-side tush-scooch, nestling herself in.

And although the backroom has lots of books and toys, what really holds Katie’s interest is the yard beyond. She inherently wants to observe and discuss.

“To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child. The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even in the era of manhood.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature

When I showed Katie the second photo, she told me that the sparrow was holding a crumb. Now where would she get the idea that birds love crumbs?

* ”The Tables Turned” by William Wordsworth. (I couldn’t very well cite a 19^th century American author without an offsetting British Romantic.)