Last week I was deadheading a hanging plant, a plant I’d watered daily during the high heat of this summer, when I noticed a beautiful little nest, complete with four speckled eggs, blue and brown. One minute I was looking at four eggs, the next minute the top of one egg cracked and was pushed off, revealing a helpless looking creature—dark head, beak wide open and pointed at me, eyes shut, soundless. For a moment, the tiny chick looked like a drunk wearing a lampshade, swaying.

I left them alone, except to position an umbrella so the hot sun didn’t bake them, the mother giving me a quick once-over before fleeing the nest. A song sparrow, she’s rarely still, flying back to the hanging basket’s chain with her wriggling catch, she stands for a moment before dropping down into the nest. “Tchep tchep,” all day long, as she flies back and forth. “Tchep,” that’s how the bird book describes the sparrow’s call.

A day later I gave into temptation and saw the chicks had sprouted grey down. The mother had removed every scrap of eggshell.

The last day I saw the chicks, I wasn’t even bothering the nest with my peeking. I was busy elsewhere in the garden, but I was near enough to see one chick, looking exactly like a striped and speckled sparrow, hopping down the green alley between the hanging plant, a large hydrangea, and the house. The mother’s tcheping became frantic as I watched a second fledgling stand on the edge of the hanging pot for a moment. “No, don’t jump!” A third one watched me from the nest. I never did see a fourth.

The next day, I peeked into the pot and found the nest, empty. The mother sparrow was still tcheping, so perhaps she’d rounded them up in the hydrangea. I removed the umbrella and watered the plant with abandon.

Early the next morning, long before twilight, I heard a few weary tcheps outside the window, but after that, no sign of the sparrow family.

In a few weeks I’ll take the garden down, including the hanging plant, but I’ll save the nest. After the fall, the winter will creep until—surprise!—it seals us inside. Long, long after that, the spring will unwind slowly and eventually, I’ll rehang the hanging pot, fill it with a plant, and wait for the sparrows. Should I place this year’s nest in the plant, or let her build a new one?