Urban Wildlife Leads me to Contentment

Over the last couple of weeks my boys and I have noticed two little finches hanging out in the carpark of St Ives Village Shopping Centre.  They are very sweet.  They have built themselves a nest on a service pipe above a car space I like due to only one side of my car being exposed to randon carpark scratches.

I love that my boys have this close up opportunity to view some urban nesting.  We are checking every couple of days for baby birds.  It has even meant I have changed coffee shops so we can check on the nest each morning.

Last week at home we left half a watermelon (getting too old for us to eat) out on the side lawn so that the local wildlife could eat it.  Each morning the boys would watch from the sun room as the sun rose and the possums would get in a last nibble before running off up their trees and into bed for the day.  Then during the day the parrots, cockatoos and lorikeets all came down to visit.  The local Kookaburras hung around to check on the fuss.  The boys just loved it.

I grew up in a terraced house on the edge of Newtown, Enmore, Stanmore.  We had a clothesline on a tiny patch of grass with an old dunny out the back.  There was no wildlife unless you count the rats and winos that sometimes slept on our front step.

I was lucky though.  My grandparents retired to Huskisson in Jervis Bay.  My parents promptly bought a caravan on Currambene Creek.  My life was transformed.  Each Friday afternoon my brother and I would get picked up from school and travel down to Husky for the weekend.  We’d then come home either very late on Sunday night or first thing Monday morning.  I grew up in the bush.  We made cubby houses, BMX tracks and swam in the creek.  We fished, took the tinny down the creek to Callala and had sausage sizzles on the beach.  At night after dinner we'd sit by camp fires and tell stories or play sardines around the caravan park and surrounding bush.  I had an amazing group of friends, most from Wollongong, with like minded parents.  We had freedom.  It was an idyllic childhood.  It was the 1970s & 80’s.

Things have changed and as much as I would love my kids to have the freedom that I had growing up, it can’t happen.  The Workaholic needs to be in the city for work and usually works on Saturdays meaning a similar weekend plan just can’t work for us.  The Little Man had a fabulous time in Huskisson at the Workaholics family holiday house (yes, this is where we met) with his big cousins over Christmas 2010, he really blossomed experiencing a little of the freedom I had as a child.  It is such a pity we can’t do that more often.

I feel blessed though, to have ended up on Sydney’s Upper North Shore.  It is the best of both worlds in many ways.  Our yard is big and just a bit wild.  We get lots of wildlife in the yard and there are trees to climb.  The city is just a train trip away and the schools here are good.  I wish they could have more freedom to roam, but at the moment I am quite content with this urban wildlife they are experiencing.

It has been a long and winding path that has led us as a family to where we are, but today, while looking at those little birds making a home in a carpark, I realised how grateful I am to be just where we are.

The House of O is content and to be honest I had almost forgotten what that felt like.

Are you content in your little patch of the planet?

Take yourselves over to Maxabella Loves... for a bigger dose of Grateful.  It is very good for the soul!!