Nature Blog #1: Birds and Balconies

Tuesday, September 8, 2009
2:45pm
The wind picks up a steady confident speed as I sit here on the balcony of my apartment. This is a place I always come to sit and relax, taking in whatever sights and sounds surround me and my steel-framed railing. I chose this spot because I am high up. On the third floor of an old brick building, my balcony stretches out into the trees bodies, feet from touching their branches, moments from hearing their whispers. I like that I can see what the birds see; everything looks different from up here, and although I cannot feel the soft soiled ground beneath my toes, I can see things I never would when walking amongst the grasses.

The green is pervasive. Even though it is just a backyard, and even though I am yards away from Penn Ave and Washington Blvd, I feel enclosed in a world of leaves and pine needles, nestled in the armpits of sturdy boughs. I can see the tips of leaves that fall from the highest point of the tree, detailed with yellow rims and tan freckles, details I could never see from far down below. And for some reason I feel the bird calls and cricket songs are amplified as though the trees openings are its speakers, and I am sitting right next to them.

An assortment of small plants sits in front of me. Plants that I bought toward the end of the summer, hoping they would hold on a few more weeks so that I might enjoy their presence. I love plants. If I didn’t have a lab puppy, my apartment would be swarming with plants. I bought these few in hopes that they would fulfill the lacking of green in my home, a green I want to hang from ceilings and fill up corners. The black-eyed susan is starting to die; the once lush green leaves now wilting to a purplish tint, fuzzy hairs surround the edges. An anise hyssop stands tall next to my shoulder and although its tiny purple flowers are darkening into a stone cold gray, its leaves possess the green of mint, holding on to the warm days of September.

The crickets cry all day long up here, blending in with traffic noise so well that sometimes I cannot tell the two apart. I find this place so dense because of its merging between nature and city. What looks like an ant with wings crawls next to my laptop, pulsating its thorax back and forth on the card table as a helicopter flies overhead passing through the fluttering green of the trees swaying branches. Where a slug meets sidewalk down below, I see its iridescent trail of slime in the afternoon sun, making its way down over a bleak cloud. I want to sit here this semester and find that place between serene nature and stimulating city, that place that makes up my environment, that maintains the green of mountaintops yet lives in the urban sprawl of life. A car rears its engine as the sun breaks through the canopy and casts a warmth on my face.