Doing something dumb. Chocolate Marshmallow cake with ice cream and coffee. Listening to Legendary country music hour. Willie Nelson’s Blue Eyes and Bobbie Gentry’s Ode to Billie Joe. The ladies offered me Almond Joy flavored creamer but I’ll pass on that. The coffee is plenty good enough. Don’t need extra flavors. Don’t want fancy. Just happy to ( Read more... )

Life gets harder in a hot, dry summer.  For awhile you still mow, you get out earlier, before the heat kills you.  Then there's no rain and nothing to mow.  Even the trees suffer.  First the ornamentals, the small slender trees, but also the giants, the sycamores, the black walnut, and especially the tulip poplar.  Every day, I watered potted ( Read more... )

A friendly flash saved me from a speeding ticket tonight.  Cop car at the end of the cornfield.  Corn so tall now that I couldn't see it.  Out west I think they used to say knee high by the Fourth of July but that would be a poor year anywhere now.  More like higher than an elephant's eye.  I love these corny old sayings.

The aphids prefer one ( Read more... )

I missed another birthday. And a funeral. And a near accident, but Dad had a good day. A Wal-Mart birthday cake with a big 8 & 3 candle. A funeral service for somebody’s brother from somewhere down on Brushy Creek. A neighbor drove him to the visitation because his night vision is poor. He came home talking about how maybe he’d drive next time so ( Read more... )

I knew as soon as I saw the wilted oak hydrangea piled in the trash can that there wouldn’t be anything left.  I couldn’t  bear to confirm that for a few days. I’ll miss the air of that place and the blooming spiderwort.  I regret not trying to take the hydrangea home.

One of the hollies has died of shock but the littlest one which I gave up on is ( Read more... )

Daises in my field. Daises everywhere. My only open-minded moment on the road yesterday, I looked over and saw daises covering a grassy hill. And a deer. A deer in the daises. That phrase makes me smile. That image lingers into today. Green, brown, white.

I am in love with my neighbor's oak hydrangeas. Funny, how love starts. Something you are aware ( Read more... )

I should have gone home this weekend. The thought of going stayed in my mind all weekend. Friday night, I knew I was too tired for the drive. Saturday morning was full of bad dreams, vivid and ugly, and the rain was coming, all day Sunday, so I did my chores. My share of the work, which is rarely done. Mowing, hauling. Truly work, nothing ( Read more... )

The sky is blue. So they tell me. Do you see it too?

Nothing but work in my life these days. I gathered one more bag of weeds from the empty space and uncovered some old brick and ivy and some common mallow. I like that plant. Weed, noxious and invasive. So they say. But the leaves are pretty-shaped and you can see the mallow in its flower.

On Derby ( Read more... )

I weeded carefully. Around the one tulip, past blooming, color unknown. I removed all the old poke and the new and some of the hemlock. It's important to be careful. You never know what you might find. There is a plant which resembles spiderwort but I cannot tell. I weeded round and left it there. I left the fleabane. I found some ivy. I filled one ( Read more... )

After dark when I got home and I could smell something big somewhere in the field. A large animal but not something dead. Maybe something roaming. It was gone this morning and everything smelled fresh and clean down the driveway. I stopped to pull up a tarp I had lazily left there over winter and uncovered a pair of snakes. As wide as a waterhose, ( Read more... )