Pleasantly Disturbed Thursday

It’s been a while since I did one of these, so I thought I see what pleasant disturbances are in the environment at the moment.

First, we have a visitor. Actually two visitors. Our youngest, Andrew, fly in yesterday afternoon from Florida, and last night his girlfriend Jessica flew in from North Carolina, despite the best efforts of Delta Airlines to keep her flights from happening. They’re in for a few days, Jessica to meet Andrew’s family, Andrew’s family to meet Jessica. I’ve been making notes to remind me of all the old Andrew stories to tell her.

My reading has become somewhat eclectic – Seamus Heaney’s poetry, Out of a Far Country by Angela Yuan and Christopher Yuan, You Are a Writer by Jeff Goins, some short stories, more poetry, and The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker. No pattern here as far as I can see.

The writing, well, the writing is still painful. I’m slowly going through notes from the editor and publisher, revising the manuscript of A Light Shining, and then will rewrite it. Completely. It’s means a publication delay but there’s no getting around it. Enough said.

I haven’t done much biking lately, not with the temperature breaking 100 degrees for so many days. It was 103 when I got home yesterday at 6 p.m. I’m hearing of 105 for Friday, maybe a break into the 90s on the weekend. I’ve been watering the yard and gardens like a fool. We have a voluntary “don’t water your grass and gardens” situation in our little suburb, but the suburbs all around us don’t have one.

I had to choose – be green and sustainable and let our grass and all that new landscaping we put in this spring die or turn on the faucets. All the neighbors look around to see what everyone else is doing, and then we all sneak out in the dark early morning and turn the sprinklers on.

Yesterday morning as I rounded the corn of the house to turn the back sprinkler on, I spotted a small black something in the grass. It was a black field mouse, a very dead black field mouse. I don’t like mice, even dead ones. After turning the sprinkler on, I kept going round the house to turn the front sprinkler on. Then I went inside, got a plastic sandwich bag to dispose of the dead critter, and went back to the scene of the death. The mouse was gone. Puzzled, I walked back toward the door, and saw the neighbor’s cat sitting our front porch, looking very satisfied.

At least it wasn’t a coyote. I haven’t seen the coyotes lately which live in our area, so they may have moved on. Which may explain the chipmunk invasion. I’m still trying to figure out what’s been digging in the garden – three places in the back gardens – just enough digging to dislodge the mulch, but not anything deeper than that. Probably the chipmunks.

We also haven’t seen many squirrels lately. We love the neighbor’s cat.

Because of a project at work I’m involved in, I’ve been paying attention to our yard’s bee population. Bees love the perennial Monarda, and our Monarda became a kind of garden kudzu this year. I’ve seen four kinds of bees buzzing around – big bumblebees, small bumblebees, honey bees, and leafcutter bees, so small they look like gnats. (Did you know that most bees – like 70 percent of them – live in the ground? But I digress.)

And it wouldn’t be a pleasantly disturbed Thursday or Friday with some photos of the grandson.s I’m so glad you asked.

At two months old, Caden weighed in at 16 pounds. We call him Michelin Man.

And here’s a shot of Cameron eating Rice Krispies – and it’s the only real way to eat them – with the spoon used for stirring Rice Krispies Treats.

Photographs by Stephanie Young. Used with Cameron and Caden’s permission.