Already
Saturday night. Looking
out the window, gloom is palpable. The darkness, really dusk, is black beyond
the maple tree. The foreground is a carpet of fallen, shriveled leaves hiding
the grass beneath. It’s time for me to go out into this scene and retrieve the
squirrel-proof-but-not-racoon-proof bird feeder. Racoons can sit on the
crossbar of the rusted swing set form, reach out to the feeder, shake it, and
soon the wire holding it to the iron latch comes loose the whole thing falls,
opening all the feeder squares to the marauder(s). After two nights of this
behavior, I bring in the feeder and return it when I arise.
Now, it’s pitch dark outside, but light inside, what with four lamps in this sunroom-cum-office on the southeast side of this old house.
Milton,
the ferocious hurricane that followed Helene through Florida had
diminished to a Cat 3. When my Gulf Breeze daughter-in-law complained via
social media, I answered her, “But you live in Paradise, right?” She answered
quickly, “They paved over that a long time ago.”
The
grandsons from Sarasota drove two hours north before the storm, but were
back home in two days. Haven’t yet heard about the granddaughter from Tampa who
fled to friends in Savannah.
While an MFA online classmate who lives on
the east coast of the assailed state prepared, she was not hit except with a
little rain and a little wind. “Little” in the sense could be anything short of
killer winds and rain. Relatives in Georgia and other southeast states hailed
an “all-safe-but-the-yard” message.
While the extreme south’s getting more
rain than it needs, we in central Arkansas are thirsting for the liquid stuff.
Not that we don’t have access to water, but the plants and trees need some in a
big way. I fill pitcher after pitcher to keep the new celosia and pansies
watered, plus the mums and what few dianthus plants are still green. I figured
out a clever way to keep the two pots of pink petunias blooming: When one pot
looks puny, I sit it down in a galvanized bucket that holds the end of the
hose, run a bit of water in the bucket and voila, it revives and blooms
happily. Same with the other pot.
c 2024, PL dba lovepat press, Benton AR USA
