500

Sunday’s PrayerNote marked my 500^th post on PrayerNotes from the Homestead, since starting with Substack in September of 2023.

I want to thank you for being a reader. I think of you as I sit in the early dark of the day and ponder the beginnings of the next post. Your willingness to read is part of the exchange that fuels my writing and I thank you for it. Writing remains a meaningful way for me to engage the world and express what stirs in me in the ongoing encounter.

And a special thanks to those of you who choose to support my work financially. It means a lot to me to have you alongside as I write. Thank you.

A few notes from behind the scenes on that 500^th post. The eggs are Phoebe’s. Last year their nesting efforts failed. I think the female was killed early on in the summer or left, as the nest remained empty, and the male sang through the early summer without a response. I was especially grateful to have a pair come to the yard this spring and rather quickly they added to the nest in the old chicken coop at the Homestead. I checked on it late last week and found the two eggs.

Some years I have stood on an overturned bucket to photograph the nest. I’ve also been known to stack a few boards together to get me closer. I always seem to have boards aplenty for the job. The nest is hanging high on the side of one of the roof rafters. Each year the rafter seems to get farther away. This is not because the rafter is moving but because Groundhog keeps tunneling under the dirt floor and the chicken coop floor as we’ve known it, keeps collapsing, deeper and deeper into the earth.

With the ground under my feet being so unpredictable, I’m trying to be a bit more conscious of safety as I age and work in place. So this year, instead of climbing atop something to get at the nest, I had the idea of using the phone in selfie mode to take the picture. On my tip-toes I could just manage to hold the phone over the nest. The image above reveals how well that idea worked.

I then went to trial and error, holding the phone over the nest the other way and guessing at the right angle to shoot. Here is one of the takes from that sequence.

Eventually, one came out good enough for the post and I called it a day before Phoebe returned and wondered what I was doing at her nest.

I promise, good reader, to let my curiosity be my guide, to hold my heart and spirit open before the wonder of the world as seen through the lens of our life here on these few acres. And as words come together, out of experience and prayer, I promise to keep sharing them with you.

Love and Peace, Glenn