Responsibilities of the coming season

Amid the pear harvest, 2017

         What does it mean, I wonder, when the oldest sibling of seven—the matriarch, so to speak––fails to want to attend every gathering with extended family (and sometimes with friends of the host.)? That would be me. A recent Sunday’s gathering on the Arkansas River was for a sibling’s husband’s 70^th birthday. The one I missed on Labor Day was in Little Rock. And this week, one sib asked the others,“How about lunch today?” I declined, saying I was wrung out from the day before.

                Let’s see if I can make a case for myself. As owner of an acre of yard and a Depression-Era home, I am never, ever finished with “to-do” items. No sooner than I cut back the privet in the north yard and leave that area for a while, when I happen back by it, the privet has thumbed its collective nose and is as high as when I cut it last. If privet were a cyborg security system, I’d be the safest one on this street. Maybe. The only property line where privet is NOT, is the north where roses, redbud, crape myrtle and Russian Olive live and thrive. Okay, so with any spare time, and when it’s cool enough, I work in the yard.

                The house is about the same thing. I still have not replaced the furniture in the office where the ceiling repair happened. I HAVE washed the windows and all the blue glass, and have gone through SOME of the books that I dusted and replaced. So, give me that.

                Then, there’s the pear crop that’s winding down. I try to work up at least one batch a day. The quart baggies of boiled fruit are gradually filling up the second chest freezer in the shed. At one time, four large pans in the fridge held fruit ready to cut up and bag. That's been cut to one.

                If that weren’t enough, there’s the writing projects I’ve bought into. Well, no money changes hands, but you know what I mean.

                Like the planets sometimes do, three deadlines aligned the second weekend: a quarterly, small press poetry column, a monthly writers group piece and a weekly newspaper column. See why I couldn’t spend five or so hours fifty miles north for a relative’s birthday party?

                On to another subject . . . [did I hear you say ‘thank goodness’?] It’s time for the hummingbirds to fly south, some experts tell us. But yesterday, a tiny green bird I’ve ever seen drank from the feeder.

               Spiders also have been showing up in various places. “At dusk, / weed-eating grass/ around the roses, I/ look up: nose to nose with a black/ spider.”

                And always the birds: “Juvy/ redbird, robin/ visit Couchwood today:/ one in the purple shrub, one in/ the grass.”

                And then today, a praying mantis appeared on a window screen.

                Enjoy nature’s gifts and be thankful those gifts do not include hurricanes, fires or earthquakes.

Cut-up pears cooling on the counter

c 2017, PL dba lovepat press