Window

Looking out this morning got me to thinking.

Eagles have the better paint job but when the wind is gusting to 35 knots, buzzards are better fliers and sure do seem to enjoy it. Why do I think of the "Undertakers Ball" when I see vultures ripping up the sky?

The yard deer are starting to eat the rhododendron. Time to cut up a soap bar and hang the pieces on plants I'd like to still have in the spring. The twin button bucks are really growing fast. As I watch them, I wonder what they are feeding on...besides my garden?

The wind knocked another tree down across the paved road in front of one of the neighbor's farm driveway. AS usually happens, the other folks that live back here got a saw and cleared it out, cutting the hardwood into firewood lengths. As a group, the neighborhood clears a couple of trees a year out of those folks way. Since 1988 no one remembers them ever saying "thankyou." We'll talk about them but it won't matter. Even if the tree is lying across their driveway and everybody else can get by, the neighbors will still get together and cut it up... But we'll talk about them.

The woodpeckers were everywhere this morning. I wondered about this until I noticed that the wind had knocked the suet feeder down onto the porch and Maggie, the cat, was standing guard, trying to look disinterested. The birds are studying the situation but refuse to get closer than a certain distance. Maggie gets up to the deck by climbing twenty feet up a dogwood tree. She is all fluffy looking but when some one tries to pick her up, they realize that she's hard as a concrete block wearing a fur coat. The coyotes don't mess with her and the dogs get out of her way when she walks up to the water dish. Oddly, even though she lays her ears back and cat growls at them, the racoons eat whatever they want of her food. It's a rock, paper, scissors, pecking order out there, and I don't pretend to understand it.

It's cold today, dusting us with snow, and I have to restock the firewood on the back porch. This is a good chore. it has a far more tangible reward than things like cleaning, which also must be done before the wife gets home from her mother's house in Virginia. We men have decided that it's better for her not to know what the house looks like when she's been gone. After we clean up, it will still be a mess by her standards. I don't pretend to understand this either.

Peace,

Steve

The years teach much which the days never knew. ..The days come and go like muffled and veiled figures sent from a distant friendly party, but they say nothing, and if we do not use the gifts they bring, they carry them as silently away.

Emerson