Shedding time

When I walk the dog around the yard in the morning or afternoon, I like to have my camera handy. It helps me pay attention to what I see, so that I really see it. For a few moments, I forget all else except what's right in front of me. Today I zeroed in on the Sycamore tree in the SW corner of the 3-acre lot. It's in the process of shedding bark, an annual event. The ground at the base of this tree is littered with thin strips of discarded bark. Aren't the layers and colors wonderful?

Chimney Repair

Chimney repair began this morning, early. Two young men are sawing out the damaged bricks and mortar, then replacing them. While this guy was checking his text messages, his partner was in the driveway, mixing Portland and sand with water on a piece of plywood. The mix looked like a thick pudding being stirred with a trowel. He handed it up in what looked like an oversized pastry bag. If the rain holds off for a few hours, they may finish the job today. The white tarp is covering the temporary wooden frame protecting our new (December) heat pump. R. is outside, hovering from a distance, doing odd jobs in the yard. He just cut down the Japanese Maple that the drought killed a year or two ago. Even though we haven't seen leaves on the little tree in almost two years, there's a huge empty space there now.

Sally's Room

In the book, Sally's Room, by Mary K. Brown, Sally discovers that when her room in empty, she can “dance in here.” That’s how I felt after R. and I removed everything but the furniture from my very cramped study. After the skies dumped 16+ inches of rain on us in 6 weeks (April-May), I found mold growing in the southwest corner and knew we had to get my books and files out of there quickly. It took an entire weekend of backbreaking work to do this, but now I can sleep at night, assured that I will not wake up to find fuzz growing on Mary Oliver’s poetry or my genealogy records. Or my CDs, art supplies, etc. (Although I doubt that Mary Oliver would be offended. She’d probably write a poem about the fungi reclaiming her words.) We’re still waiting for the repairs to begin on our chimney and roof before the contractor can even think about making the room livable again. In the meantime, I’m looking at the almost empty room and wondering if I can bear to pitch about half of my stuff so I can actually have some floor space. Maybe to dance in. Or maybe even room to sew or make art. Maybe I’ll redo the closets so I can move the filing cabinets inside. Maybe I’ll move the bookshelves. I’ve already taken four or five bags of clothing to Goodwill, but, alas, only one box of books. Everything else is stuffed into one end of the living room. I plan to be very selective when I put things back, but will I have the courage to cull enough stuff so that I can make art? Dance?

Resting

When I returned home yesterday, R. motioned for me to look out the kitchen window at the birdbath. On the left is what I saw. I wonder if this is the same guy I took a picture of last summer, curled up in almost the same spot. That picture is on the right.


Lying down beside
Our birdbath, the yearling buck--
Velvet antler stubs.

Like an inchworm

I don't know that I've ever gotten a new blouse after finding an inchworm crawling on it, but it was fun to imagine that the worm was measuring for one. Maybe that old wives' tale was created to teach children to be kind to harmless creatures. All I know is that I've never killed one--at least not on purpose--but have always taken great care when removing them from my clothing. Today, while watching the roofer measure and diagram our roof, it suddenly struck me how much like an inchworm he looked, walking so carefully along that steep peak, above the chimney, almost even with the tree tops. Like the inchworm, will he soon give us a new one?

White Amaryllis

This is the white amaryllis that I brought home from Mother’s condo before she died, almost ten years ago. She asked me to take it and the two red ones because she no longer wanted to tend to them. The only time the white one has bloomed since then was the year we heated the greenhouse over the winter. I guess it especially loved all the light coming through that glass room. Last summer I repotted the 3 bulbs into 4 pots. (One of the red ones had grown another bulb.) This one had hardly any dirt in the pot, so I guess it’s thanking us for taking care of it. They usually bloom in the carriage house during the winter, but this year--for some unknown reason--R. got it into his head that he wasn’t supposed to water them, so didn’t. One day in January or February I commented that I wondered why none of them had put out their usual leaves and asked if he’d watered. He said no, he didn’t think he was supposed to. Oops! So, once he started watering, they immediately responded. The red one in the background bloomed while we were in DC for the Poetry Therapy conference, but we got to see it at its peak because the dog sitter emailed us a picture. Nice!