by jphilo | Apr 26, 2011 | Walking Down the Gravel Road
Me, my family, my friends, my enemies, and total strangers all agree on one thing. This April has been a nasty one – the coldest, wettest, cloudiest, and grimmest month in living memory.
The problem is, we have very short memories.
A quick look at my April posts for the past three years reveals an embarrassing trend. Me, my family, my friends, my enemies, and total strangers agree that every April is the nastiest, coldest, wettest, cloudiest, and grimmest in living memory. To prove the point, here’s a post from April 30, 2008.
Guess we can be glad it’s almost May!’
Brrrr – Recycled
The weather reports are full of frost warnings for tonight, one day after the average last frost date for our part of the state. But I’m not complaining. No, no, no, definitely not. Never. Not me. No way.
But I’m feeling so sorry for the two poor deer who wandered across our lawn this morning. Cold, shivering little creatures, longing for spring was written all over their frozen faces. I felt so sorry for them I almost cried. But I regained control and grabbed my camera so I could take a picture of their tundra-weary faces through the picture window in the living room.
Maybe you won’t believe this, but I’m even feeling a little sorry for the asparagus. A whole passel of stalks emerged over the weekend, and they could get their tender tips nipped but good tonight. What a loss.
My greatest concern is for the magnolia. This morning I asked Hiram if we could cover the bush tonight and save the blossoms, which have been on hold for the better part of a week now, waiting to for one warm day in a row. He looked at me with his what-was-I-thinking-when-I-asked-her-to-marry-me look and said, “There’s no way to cover a tree.”
In my mind, the whole issue boils down to a matter of semantics. If he would call it a bush, there would be no problem covering it. If he insists on calling it a tree we’ve got problems. And since he’s the one who has to climb the ladder, me being quite afraid of heights, to cover the top of the bush, we’ve got problems.
There’s the frozen venison on the lawn, the asparagus shivering in its little green boots, semantic squabbles threatening our marriage, and my fear of heights which has rendered me unable to save any magnolia blossoms taller than me.
Good thing I’m not complaining about the weather today. I’ve got enough problems the way it is.
by jphilo | Feb 11, 2011 | Walking Down the Gravel Road
One of the things I like best about writing is being alone in our quiet house. Of course, an appreciation of quiet isn’t exclusive to writers. Parents dream of quiet while raising children. And elementary teachers, who spend their days surrounded by quivery masses of energy and noise, relish time alone. So as a writer, parent, and former teacher, my love of quiet aloneness may be triune in nature.
Thanks to nature, I am rarely alone in our old farmhouse on the edge of town. Because of this winter’s snow and cold, the deer who are usually content to hide in our neighbor’s woods have been stopping by for prevening* flower garden snacks on a regular basis. Some prevenings, they divide and conquer, surrounding the house while they munch the dry foliage in flowerbeds outside the living room, bedroom, and kitchen windows.
I don’t begrudge them a few dried hydrangea and marigold blossoms. But they start window peeking, it weirds me out. What is the cause of the look of longing in their chocolate brown eyes? Do they dream of coming inside, out of the cold? Or do they think I’ll strip down to my skivvies if they wait long enough?
When they get tired of waiting for a prevening floor show, which ain’t never gonna happen, they mosey over to our biggest, oldest evergreen tree. They’ve spent so much time pawing away the snow to graze on the dead grass below that the tree is ringed with hoof prints and bare patches. It looks like a mysterious crop circles, only this is a snow circle.
The hoof prints and the deer poop piling up around the perimeter is a pretty good clue that deer and not aliens are the cause of the phenomenon. But you never know with all the crazy alien abduction theorists looking for “mysteries” to exploit. It’s hard enough to get any writing done with deer chewing, burping, pooping, and window peeking. The last thing I need is a bunch of UFO paparazzi swarming around, looking for a new story. If that happens, I’ll have to fly to a warm, sunny, and deserted island to get any work done.
On second thought, maybe I should spread the UFO story.
Then I could pack my swimsuit and head for that deserted island.
Where it’s quiet
And warm.
And I can be alone.
Just don’t tell anybody where I’m going.
*Sheldon, of The Big Bang Theory, created the word prevening to “define the awkward hours between four thirty and six p.m. when it’s too late to be afternoon, but not yet evening.” I think it’s the best new word since “blog.”
by jphilo | Dec 22, 2010 | Walking Down the Gravel Road
A heat wave hit Monday. Twenty-two degrees at 7:00 AM, warm enough to walk outside for a change. So I bundled up and took advantage of the balmy weather.
From the looks of things, our yard has been crawling with critters during the week and a half I’ve been holed up inside. Our three inches of picture perfect snow is pock-marked with deer tracks. I’m not talking a meandering trail here and there, I’m talking a hooved frenzy, a dancing-in-the-moonlight conflagration, a forest full of Bambies in our back yard.
The situation is giving me the willies. Not just because we moved to the edge of town to get away from the crowds. No, I’m spooked because the greatest concentration of hoof prints – and we’re talking snow so full of holes it makes a bad case of teenage acne look good – are right outside our bedroom window.
So what’s with our four-legged forest friends? Are they a bunch of Peeping Bambies? Or are they so hungry for July and August that they’re munching the woody stems of the two Endless Summer Hydrangea bushes beside our bedroom window?
The second theory is preferable to the first. I mean, I love the hydrangeas and don’t want them to be some woodland creature’s lunch. But the thought of a crowd of eight point bucks and doe-eyed doe witnessing our age-related sleep apnea, timing our snores, and watching us drool on our pillows is enough to give a person insomnia.
But Hiram won’t be too excited if I suggest he slog through the snow and freeze his fingers while covering the hydrangeas with chicken wire. And we don’t have a BB gun to scare them off. So I have a different solution. I’ll hang a poster of my brother holding his shotgun and wearing his hunting vest in our bedroom window.
Take that, Bambi.
Take that, eight point buck.
Take that, doe-eyed doe.
Take that and find a different place to park your peepers. You’re weirding me out!
by jphilo | Nov 8, 2010 | Walking Down the Gravel Road
It happened again – another Marlin Perkins wildlife moment – near the same place as before on the walking trail. This time six deer, almost within touching distance, moseyed across the path near the little stream that runs through the cemetery and the woods. So there it was, the shot of deer I’ve been aching to capture for years, so close it would have been a fabulous shot, even without my telephoto lens. But because of my sore back thing, I was once again cameraless.
Sigh.
But it gets worse. (Or if my camera had been at hand, better.) The deer weren’t one bit frightened by a human presence. They didn’t bother hiding in the tall grass. No, they started grazing on the slope beside the walkway. Such a charming tableau, six deer nibbling at green grass beside the flowing, burbling stream, with an old stonework culvert as a backdrop.
Double sigh.
But it gets worse. (Or, to an equipped, think ahead photographer, even better.) Two of the deer, perhaps slightly unnerved by a whiff of female human stink, got up close and personal with a dainty doe. In the blink of an eye, they sipping mama’s secret recipe, warm and fresh from the spigot.
Triple sigh.
But it gets worse. (At least for Mama Doe.) Her two tipplers were not tiny, sweet spotted fawns. No, they were old enough to be spotless. Tall enough to look their flesh and blood faucet in the eye. Mature enough to munch grass after their little drinky-poo. Close enough to adult status that by the time I can lug the camera around, they won’t be nursing any more. As if I could ever get this close to six deer again. Which will never happen.
Quadruple sigh.
So my latest Marlin Perkins wildlife moment will forever be an in-the-moment moment.
The great shot that got away.
My personal digital fish tale with no one to collaborate or deny the story.
But it’s way worse for that poor doe, nursing teenage twins too lazy to pour their own milk and chop their own lettuce. Poor thing!
I wonder, do deer sigh?
by jphilo | Oct 11, 2010 | Walking Down the Gravel Road
For the past two weeks, we’ve been wallowing in a glorious Indian summer, the longest and warmest in years. Not only a prolonged warm stretch, but a dry stretch as well, the first since early June. We’ve been making up time lost to the summer’s rain and floods – grilling every chance we get, turning off the furnace, opening the windows, working in the yard.
And I’ve been walking a new route in the mornings, going farther than usual on these mild October mornings, exploring paths inaccessible much of the year because of heat, wind, rain or snow. In this brief window of perfect weather, with the horizon a golden halo of trees, I push past the comfort of normal routine. I push the limits of my body and the limits of time available to spend. I store up time outdoors on these last warm days before cold weather hits.
Most mornings deer greet me, where their path to water crosses the walking path. They eye me nervously. So I freeze, pull out my camera, snap away, then inch forward one slow step after another, snapping pictures until the deer turn tail and run. Down the steep bank they fly, to the water at the bottom of a steep ravine. I marvel at their sure-footedness, their grace and beauty, the brilliantly colored trees surrounding them, the music of the rushing water where they drink. I shiver in the chill air as dawn walks beside me.
If I could choose one moment for time to stand still, this would be the one.
An Indian summer morning. A blessing from God.
