In spring, we cleaned out the nestboxes, propping a ladder against their respective trees — an arbutus, a fir, and a small cedar cut down a few years ago, limbed, and set in place as a garden post. This last location was where we’d nailed the first box, the one that welcomed swallows and where Forrest called to Parva on summer days long ago. We’d see them checking it out, darting in and out excitedly; and then one of the pair would sit on the clothesline while the other took in threads of moss or lichen plucked from branches of ocean spray. Each box contained remnants of a nest, a small cup of dried grass and moss and a certain amount of hair from our golden retriever. I know at least one chestnut-backed chickadee family nested in one of the boxes last year. We’d see them checking it out, darting in and out excitedly; and then one of the pair would sit on the clothesline while the other took in threads of moss or lichen plucked from branches of ocean spray. Maybe the other nests were older. Maybe I never noticed. The years pass and the summers enter the rich tapestry of memory so that we ask, When did we plant the ornamental cherry tree? Or the fig tree, laden with green fruit as I write, or when did we swim by moonlight, or cook sausages in a grove of trees on White Pine Island among flowering yarrow and sweet golden grass? Which was the last year we all lived in this house, dogs eager for the children to run with them or take them up the mountain to enter the cool creeks in early morning while spiderwebs jeweled with dew hung across the water? I am still hoping for the swallows to return. We see them for a few brief days in spring, flying ecstatic over our roof and garden. And they nest in multitudes down by the lake where a fervent birder has erected dozens of houses, painted bright red, in the trees overlooking the water. Later, they appear again — the parents, perhaps, taking the young on their maiden flight.

This year, a chickadee couple seemed to be building a nest in the box on the arbutus tree but something must have frightened them — or else they found a location more to their choosing. There has been a pair around this summer, though, appearing suddenly in a clematis or perched briefly on a wire; maybe it’s the same couple, raising their brood in a tree cavity somewhere in the vicinity of the house. We hoped they’d choose one of our boxes to nest in but all we can do is make sure each is ready, the cedar sides weathered to silver, each roof intact, and wish for the best.