Leslie Anne Tarabella Southern With a Gulf Coast Accent

Happy Independence Day! I love this holiday so much and we’ve been celebrating for a week now with both sons home at some point. Their schedules thankfully overlapped one day so we could all be together. A few days from now, I get to host a larger group for dinner, and I’m hoping everyone likes to swim, because that’s the only way we’ll stay cool. What a heat wave it is! 

We’ve been watching “Band of Brothers,” the 2001 WWII drama. It makes me love and appreciate America all over again. 

The swimming pool actually feels like a bowl of hot soup, but once you get out, it feels (almost) chilly. Then again, I’ve been freezing cold since 1990. 

If you follow me on Instagram you may have seen my plea for help in identifying a mother bird. She built a nest about shoulder-high in my Confederate Jasmine that’s climbing up my side porch column. I discovered her when I watered my garden and she flapped in my face. I screamed, she screamed, and we had to come to some sort of agreement. My tomatoes were withering in the heat and needed water, but the bird thought I should just walk away from perfectly good vegetables. 

Alas, the mystery was solved when upon the hatching of the tiny chicks, came the proud father — a bright red Cardinal. I had suspected she was a Cardinal, but the blue speckled eggs threw me off and I wasn’t sure.  Isn’t it funny that the father showed up after all the work was done, building the nest, laying the eggs, sitting on them and bickering with the lady of the house over the right to the garden hose? He seriously stood in the twisted vines with his chest puffed out, so proud of his new children. 

Both mom and dad Cardnals were nearby but allowed us to take this quick picture. I think they’re very proud.

My garden is a bit withered, but surviving on sporadic watering sessions. I offered birdseed as a gift to the new parents, which they promptly scattered everywhere. 

Our country is feeling more turmoil, anger, and fear than usual, yet having my children back in my nest for a while and a new Cardinal family in their nest makes me happy. Home is where the heart is, and for all its aches and pains, America still has my heart.