I'm Adalimone and this is the Slowdown.

Outside my window now, there is a crab apple tree just about to bloom.

I give it a few weeks, maybe 10 days, until it is a full frenzy of color, almost unbearable

in its beauty.

I love that little tree.

It's where I hang the feeder and put the bird bath.

It's where we buried our cat snow when she died a few years ago.

All the action in the backyard centers around that tree.

In spring, I decided to make a shade garden, and with many types of hostas and purple

eukaras, coral bells, and a few colladiens.

Right as I was doing this in the backyard, I found a dead dove, just barely out of the

egg.

All around the other morning doves were making their haunting noises and moving from tree

branch to power line, and it felt like they wanted me to do something.

So I buried the newborn bird, underneath one of the hostas I planted near the bird bath.

The bird bath is popular with the doves, as is the seed on the ground.

Afterwards it felt as if the birds and I had gone through something together.

I know that may sound a little out there, but it felt like they knew I had done something

respectful with their dead.

Now there's a whole family of morning doves that have made our backyard their home, and

the thing is, I have no idea which two birds were the original pair, and which birds were

the fledglings, but they all love that spot.

...