Birds and messy gardens

We added a room onto our house last year.  It was a huge project as we don't hire out the work--we hire our children instead.  The upside is that the girls know how to build things and we save a ton of money.  The downside is that we spent most of last year in various stages of construction, though not everyone in my family thinks that is a downside!  (Brian and Sophie in particular love these projects.)  But we spent three weeks with a giant hole in our house, and months with our kitchen pretty torn up, so as exciting as it all was and as happy as I am with the results, I at least remember the downside. 

I am seeing some garden effects from this project that I didn't anticipate.  Because we were working non-stop on construction, I didn't do much gardening last year.  And I'm fortunate that my garden is mature and survived just fine, though it is way messier.  But it feels even more full of life this Spring.  Though the weeds are as big as some of my plants, it is also full of birds.  Aside from the robin who is sitting on a nest of eggs right by our front door, we also have a chickadee nest in one of our bird houses up in the garden.  In fact, the whole garden is brimming with bird activity and their beautiful songs. 

I was really lamenting my garden last year.  It was hard to watch the beds go unweeded and the shrubs go unpruned.  I simply didn't have the time.  I did put in a very small vegetable garden because I couldn't help it, but even that got little attention from me.  I was grateful for the vegetables we got and surprised that my small amount of maintenance seemed to be enough--at least for a small harvest.  But I very much thought it was a "bad" thing that I was neglecting my garden.  I'm starting to reconsider this. 

My garden, though wild, is really colorful and looks good--so long as you don't look too close.  And the wildlife seems to be loving it.  We always have deer and the occasional river otter wander through and we've always had plenty of birds.  But never can I remember this much bird activity or this many nests.  I wonder if perhaps the lesson here is that I don't need to work so hard.  Maybe a garden is supposed to be messy.  And as I frequently compare a garden to a life, maybe it's a lesson for my life too.  Maybe full and messy is what it is all about...