farmer squirrels
Our neighborhood is home to a burgeoning squirrel population. I opened the door this morning to put a Netflix envelope out for the mail carrier -- sent one careening off the porch. Went for a run a little later, and almost tripped over another as it burst from some shrubs and sprinted across the sidewalk. This is 100 percent okay with me as I love squirrels (and chipmunks, and pikas... I'm a sucker for a small, furry-tailed rodent).
One of our squirrels' more amusing behaviors over the course of the summer has been their unintentional contributions to our garden. We have a mixed seed feeder hanging in the backyard, and as our local dark-eyed juncos are very messy eaters, quite a bit of food spills onto the patio. The squirrels have seized upon this opportunity to bury sunflower seeds all over the yard. The seeds, of course, sprouted, and we were blessed all summer with a proliferation of miniature sunflowers. As the flowers matured and their blooms started to fade, I noticed their heads disappearing one by one. Then I witnessed a squirrel busily disassembling one on the patio, tossing sunflower shrapnel over its shoulder as it separated the seeds from the rest of the flower head. Harvest time!
I doubt the squirrels knew what they were doing when they planted their sunflower seeds. They were simply doing what squirrels do -- burying their food to meet future needs. Their labor produced an unintentional blessing: more seeds than their tiny squirrel brains had ever dreamed of.
Our squirrel farmers remind me that we don't always know what our labors will bring. We can only work day by day, doing what we humans do in our work, our families, and the other spheres in which we operate. We lack perfect information about our world, just as the squirrels lack horticultural knowledge. Just as the squirrels operate in a universe more intricate than they can truly understand, our lives are lived in a context beyond human comprehension. We have no way of knowing what unintentional blessings our labors may bring -- to ourselves or, perhaps more importantly, to the world around us. After all, the squirrel who planted each bloom was not likely the same squirrel to harvest its bounty. Simply living our lives the best we can makes us participants in a larger realm of possibility.
One of our squirrels' more amusing behaviors over the course of the summer has been their unintentional contributions to our garden. We have a mixed seed feeder hanging in the backyard, and as our local dark-eyed juncos are very messy eaters, quite a bit of food spills onto the patio. The squirrels have seized upon this opportunity to bury sunflower seeds all over the yard. The seeds, of course, sprouted, and we were blessed all summer with a proliferation of miniature sunflowers. As the flowers matured and their blooms started to fade, I noticed their heads disappearing one by one. Then I witnessed a squirrel busily disassembling one on the patio, tossing sunflower shrapnel over its shoulder as it separated the seeds from the rest of the flower head. Harvest time!
I doubt the squirrels knew what they were doing when they planted their sunflower seeds. They were simply doing what squirrels do -- burying their food to meet future needs. Their labor produced an unintentional blessing: more seeds than their tiny squirrel brains had ever dreamed of.
Our squirrel farmers remind me that we don't always know what our labors will bring. We can only work day by day, doing what we humans do in our work, our families, and the other spheres in which we operate. We lack perfect information about our world, just as the squirrels lack horticultural knowledge. Just as the squirrels operate in a universe more intricate than they can truly understand, our lives are lived in a context beyond human comprehension. We have no way of knowing what unintentional blessings our labors may bring -- to ourselves or, perhaps more importantly, to the world around us. After all, the squirrel who planted each bloom was not likely the same squirrel to harvest its bounty. Simply living our lives the best we can makes us participants in a larger realm of possibility.
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