FPS, Cattails, and Time

Dear Maria,

Here we are, on the cusp of October. Can spring be too far behind? Thank you for alerting me to the fact that I will have to step over Santa’s elves to get to the Halloween bat mobiles at some local stores. I apparently need some serious seasonal adjustment, or a marketing degree. The disgruntlement? Oh, I’ve got that down.

Got home last Friday from a visit with my parents in Greenville. Only two observations about the drive home—one, a convoy of trucks on hills is a no go, and two, a lot of folks are texting, a lot. Maybe we should change the speedometers to read feet per second instead of miles per hour. I know, I know, I have carped about this idea before.

The problem is that around town going 40 seems not very demanding, and who is going to be driving a distance 40 miles at that speed? On the run to Publix?

Okay—a red-bellied woodpecker just landed on the feeder. That looks absurd, and the chickadees on the lattice next to the feeder seem stunned. The doves will have plenty of seed to peck at on the ground.

I’m telling you 58 feet per second on the readout might give some pause texting-wise. People understand a second and understand a foot. Especially when tailgating ten feet behind the traffic ahead. Or driving in a tight pack of traffic. Nope, can’t think of a way to talk about this problem without sounding like a scold, but when I see children in the car with a parent whose head is down—well, makes me more than a little crazy inside.

Over the past few months I have been taking a slower route home from Barnes & Noble because the view of sunsets is better. Costs me 5-7 minutes according the Google map directions. I can live with that. I have noticed that near the entrance of a trucking company along my drive there is a retention pond that over the summer added cattails along its banks.

Maybe a case of things that can be noticed at 66 fps rather than 95 fps. Plus or minus the five minutes or so. Time to rustle up lunch.

Hope all goes well for you and yours,

srk

P.S. Max just flushed four doves when I released him into the backyard.

Trump, Putin, and a Broad-shouldered Hawk

Dear Maria,

I know, I know—I offer no excuses. Not because they’re lame, but because they don’t exist. Zip, zero, none. Weather has been lovely, at least. Now that is lame. But, the roses are reaching above my head, the ornamental grasses are seeding, and the azalea out front is blooming. Yep, the azalea. I’ll enclose a photo.

While I ate lunch on the patio, the bees and butterflies were busy in the lantana. Max? Oh, he was on his back, grinding in dirt and dead grass and some crushed leafy stuff so that it could be vacuumed up in the house, rather than raked up outside. Good boy.

I still avoid thinking much one way or the other about Trump’s campaign—I guess it is a campaign. My hunch is that he will grow weary dismissing the nagging questions on the trail, and even may come to recognize that being CEO, or whatever title he uses, has little to do with serving as the president and so no longer merits his attention.

Putin interests me a bit more as he directs a military—ever expanding—and certainly knows his country’s history in Afghanistan and with Chechnya. Syria? That he is a narcissistic bully is no great insight, but Syria?  Of course, when he looks in the mirror, the only face that seems to matter stares back. But maybe he is the grandest grand master of realpolitik, and I should continue ever so quietly to tend my garden. Good boy.

Watched a good-sized hawk make a kill last week. The bird swooped in low and dipped behind a white panel van parked in my neighbor’s yard across the street, and then it came back up with something in its talons, only a shadowy ball with a thin tail. Mouse or rat, I could not tell.

I changed out the bird seed in the feeder and so far the usual suspects mostly—wrens, finches, and chickadees. The doves keep to the ground beneath, but a blackbird has been at the feeder. Although not that large a bird, he looks Godzilla-like, hanging on to the wire. Brewer’s blackbird, I think.

No news yet that might decide when I might be on the move. I’ll keep in touch. Schedule for that being—well, TBA. I’ll do better.

Putinesque? Trumpism? Maybe not.

Enjoy the cooler weather even as the nights lengthen.

Yours, to be sure, 

srk

Little Articles of Faith

Dear Maria,

Finally, September. Although Labor Day weekend is not until the end of this week, at least there is some kind of promise in the air that the weather will relent a bit. The truth is—the truth—four out of the last five mornings have been cool enough for breakfast outdoors.

Of course, you know how I feel about getting outside, and this morning was pleasant enough to take a little off the top of shrubs, pulls some weeds, and deadhead the roses without breaking into a sweat. Good business.

Now here at this address deep into the fifth growing season, I am able to count on certain patterns as the sun courses along. Across the street, the neighbor’s water oak dropped a bunch of colored leaves last week, which it has done late summer each year. The old vines that climb the white oak out back have started changing colors—always an early sign along with the neighbor’s oak.

Hummingbirds, morning and evening, have been working over the roses and the althea—sometimes in the lantana, but not often. The kites have not been about for a week or so, and the arrival of the big hawk that seems to return each fall to terrorize the neighborhood is a month away most likely.

The other night at Barnes & Noble—yes, a java chip grande at hand—I was reading the short blurbs found at the beginning of The Economist, and then the next morning I happened to read online a much longer article on one of the same topics, Chinese dissent artist Ai Weiwei. I take those little snippets as gospel, so a 1,500-word effort must mean—well, what?  I can only imagine dozens of books have been written about on Weiwei.

Fourteen biographical or autobiographical works about Weiwei listed at Amazon. Yes, I had to check. Too easy not to. Speaks to how little I know, yet I read 5 or 6-sentence summations greedily and then feel like I know something of some situation or event beyond my daily horizon.

Read half-dozen or so articles on Katrina—schools, levees, breakdown of governmental services, police, Charity Hospital, small businesses. A sort of skimming the tip of the iceberg.

Pyracantha berries, I believe, will begin to redden soon.

I expect family gatherings will mark the upcoming weekend. Be well, and maybe next time I will get around to saying a little something about national politics. It will be brief. If I bother.

Yours, of course, 

srk