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

                                

When "need-to-do"s become "must-do"s

Google Image: In a Tizzy

 

Have you ever spent an entire day in your pajamas and robe? If you’re in a certain age and career bracket, maybe you have. With a body ache from the previous day’s outside work, I did just that. No place to go, no one coming by, summer-hot—so hot I turned the window ACs on earlier than usual.
 

Inside tasks needed doing anyway: hand-washing the dishes before the new latch on the dishwasher was installed, washing a load of old but useable rugs, catching up on my writing records and submissions—stuff like that. Stuff that, when the day is over, you wonder what you did all day.
 

Does no one else ever feel like staring out the window at the wind in the maple tree, seeing the brown thrasher in the grass, the squirrel on the tree root? Or sitting on the porch swing reading the day’s papers? Surely so.
 

But windows need washing, shelves need rehanging after a year, paneling needs painting. All sorts of “need-to-dos” inside, including emptying the luggage from a 2-weeks-ago trip.” Must-dos” in preparation for a July 4 family reunion AT THIS PLACE.
 

 And yet I stall—checking and answering email and Facebook, trying to get chapter numbers of my finished-but-in-revision sequel to coincide.

 

Oh, today’s the deadline for the PRA monthly: let me see if I can write an Etheree on “ants and other creepy crawlies.” And, by June 30, I must send in haiku and tanka about “stillness-silence-loneliness” to M. Siddiqui for his annual Season’s Greeting Letters. I need to search my files.
 

Finally, on the second day, I dressed. I felt energetic, so I washed the four south windows in the office/blue room, plus all the glassware from the window sills and shelves.
 

One of the upper-paned windows had sagged on one side, leaving an inch gap for the heat and air to escape. Determined to fix that sucker once and for all, I pushed the window closed with a broom handle. Then I found a hammer and a long, rusty nail from Dad’s stash, and by holding the lower pane open with my head, secured the nail under the offending, drooping section. We’ll see how long it holds. It’s hard to get a good smack on the hammer in such close quarters.
 

That done, I reversed the five-tiered bookcase so the short end faced the east wall, replaced the clean blue glass and called it a day. Tomorrow, I would attack the accumulated paper glut on the desk, table tops and in various plastic containers.
 

Jim Mullen’s humor column on downsizing in Sunday’s Saline Courier set me to thinking: If I didn’t want to pack it were I to move, toss it. Yet how can I toss Kid Billy’s school papers on “what lies in my future?”? How can I toss a packet of note cards with epitaphs and good first lines for future stories?
 

Maybe those crates can go in the attic. Along with those that have been there since we moved here in 2006.
 

I guess it’s like Dad’s tools and jars of rusty nails: you never know when you might need something.