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Joke, No Joke

Dear Maria,

Thanks for the birthday wishes, much appreciated. I did, and only half in jest, joke about becoming Medicare eligible at the beginning of the month. Milestones, you know. And I did once again trot out my standard line about how being upright is all right, not only for my birthday but for a friend as well—older, by the way.

Jokey, but not.

Yesterday the odometer in the truck rolled around finally to 160,000 miles. Not bad for a 2006 that had 35,000 miles on it when I bought it in February of ’07. Hit this mark as I pulled into my driveway after several errands. Made me laugh. I did think that 10 years from now I can be the old guy with that old truck in the neighborhood.

Spare me the retort—too obvious by a million miles.

I have been thinking about your—what would be the word—lament, or uneasiness, or uncertainty about the worthiness of doing the work that you gave so much time, obviously, and effort to for more than 3 decades.

You did the work earnestly and honorably, diligently and passionately. Your employers got their money’s worth, and someone—more than one, no doubt—had a better experience as a result.

And there is that whole modeling behavior element. Surely you were watched doing the job, and so you demonstrated a way of going about the work and your replacement may draw on your example.

Pointedly, I trace some of my efforts in the classroom to a particular teacher in high school. I hope that my work, my approach, served some students well. Some of those students are themselves teaching now, and perhaps they continue directly and/or indirectly under my influence and they will have students who become teachers. And surely my teacher had teachers who influenced him. A long thread reaching back, to be sure, and spinning forward I hope.

Maybe my mantra of one, one reader or one neighbor or one student being reached or touched in a positive manner seems too limited in scope. But that one-at-a-time count can add up, or so I have come to believe.

And then there is that whole example by failure. I’ll save that for another letter—or a book.

I know you are counting the days for your homecoming. Here leaves are yellowing, the grass is showing signs of slowing down—that mowing thing, and August nears its end.

Be well.

Fondly,

srk

Small Matters

Dear Maria,

Thank you for the picture of the Gambel’s quail, which was a new one to me. Take a look at the Eastern kingbird, which was a new one to me here. Two hung out on our fences in the evenings over a week or so, and then gone.

I am sorry, of course, to hear the length of your stay is now uncertain again. Frustrating for you, obviously. Maybe the kids can get out there again for the holidays—which must seem very far off and so I guess the notion is not so helpful. But, maybe.

How amazing that at Saguaro you should run into your friend from junior high days. And she, too, has two children. Sounds like that visit was good medicine.

My coincidences of late are pretty trivial. I mentioned to my parents that the goldfinches were all about the sunflowers among the apple trees in the mornings and evenings. The next week, I read Thoreau make the same observation in one of his journals—goldfinches and sunflowers. A small detail, but I found the shared experience kind of heartening across the years and miles.

The other moment happened last night. I have mentioned several times to folks that I am fortunate not to be stung given the number of bees around the lavender, milkweed, and Roses of Sharon. When I am sharing their space, I do tell them not to waste their energy coming after me—why not talk to them? Nothing lost one way or another. And so far, so good.

Except, except, wasps are also in the airspace. Last night, somehow, one managed to get underneath my t-shirt as I brought my stuff inside for night. I shook my t-shirt unaware of exactly what was under there, and then, pop! That electric pinprick. I pulled off my shirt and shook it and the little demon dropped down on the floor. Oh, yes, I stomped it into the oblivion.

Truth be told—and so no heroic spin—no swelling, not even a mark, and no soreness after 5 minutes or so.  Feel free to laugh, or at least chuckle.

The past week, more and more geese are overnighting on the lake—40-60 now. And more seem to be coming in for a break during the afternoon. Early in August, I know, but days shorten and the sun shifts a little more southward. So the shade says.

Of course, your summer is summering hard on. 

What awaits is hard to say. Do as well as you can. Many look forward to your return home.

Yours,

srk

Luxury Time

Dear Maria,

I hesitate to tell you morning temperatures have been in the low 60s for 3 days. Didn’t hesitate enough, huh? Look at it this way—oh, never mind.

What made me think of you—yes, there was a prompting. Isn’t that how it typically goes? Anyway, I was sitting out back reading and after an hour or so, the thought came to me that I was in luxury time, at my leisure to let the minutes evaporate in a sense. Time for me now nearly never seems to need a chokehold.

Which is what you seem to be struggling with, now that you have the time to sit and think, or to read, or to paint. Okay, maybe you don’t think now—yikes—is the time. I would argue, or at least suggest, now now now.

Maybe the tug of duties at home and at work keeps you from being able to just let the days be as they come. Perhaps being told a homecoming is in the offing within a month, maybe two, unbalances present and future.  

I don’t know. Nothing new there.

Thanks—I guess—for the link to the article on the lawsuit filed by Detroit students for not being taught to read. Of course, no inalienable or constitutional right exist to be literate, but we might hope that if so much money is going to be spent, then we damn well ought to at least make sure kids can read. But by gawd, they’ve got to keep going forward chained to the calendar of testing and grade cohorts.

Don’t get me started.

Lost the squash to the bugs, cucumbers are good, tomatoes and melons still developing. The rosemary—no surprise—and the lavender are thriving. The nursery has been plagued with mildew and fungus. I am attending to the damage.

Thanks for the kind words regarding my little volume now out in the world. Others, too, have been so very supportive, so very kind. Humbling. Heartening. My mother was very pleased, and so the rest is lagniappe.

Soak in the moment as you can. You will be back in churn before you know it.

As always, still,

srk

Current Events

Dear Maria,

Now summer arrives after you have seen a raft load of triple-digit temperatures. A 96 here this week sets the high mark so far for this season. More heat to follow, no doubt.

Glad to see you in good form while visiting Santa Fe. I have not been in that area of the world since ’98 and can only wonder at how much it has grown or changed. True locals like those anywhere that became a destination must think newcomers and tourists the root of all ills. At least tourists spend money, taxes included, and go home.

I always flinch on behalf of the locale when I see articles about best places to visit, to retire, to move, to discover—an odd notion that. National news outlets touting geographic gems? Shut up.

No danger of such reportage here in Lyman even as Greenville gets a fair share of media fanfare.

My news is of the backyard sort, squash and tomatoes sighted, cucumber and melon vines developing, a pair of robins collecting nesting material. The first garlic, a bit of a revelation when fresh from the garden to the sauté pan. Not so pungent a taste, lightly aromatic—with the added quality of being an antidote to vampires, of course.

As for other news, I am mostly sure that the parents I know, have known, would do anything to keep their children safe, to make their lives better. Fortunately, overwhelmingly, those parents never faced such dire circumstances as seen elsewhere, and likely never will.

Broadly, one thought on the matter I have in mind. Better to live in the location where people flee to than from. No point in chewing too much on this bone as even more broadly, to me it seems, politics and power make pawns of us all.

I am glad your family is safe and well, I am glad my neighbors’ families are safe and well, I am glad my family is safe and well.

Glad, too, that you are feeling perkier. So, to better days ahead.

Yours, truly,

srk

 

Harvest

Dear Maria,

Greetings from Rainlandia, which is a bit of an overreach but not by as much as I would wish. Of course, in your current circumstances rain would qualify, I reckon, as a novelty.

I heard through the grapevine you chafed a bit at the notion you are convalescing. Well, that is not a terrible thing, is it? Maybe the word seems old-fashioned, or maybe you think it suggests some malingering on your part. Poppycock. You’re doing what is sensible and needs to be done.

At least you’re getting plenty of sun. I could send along a photo of gray skies—dozens and dozens of photos in fact—well, you get the picture. And, yes, I exaggerate. At least the plants and trees and the first of the vegetables are thriving.

Turns out some of last year’s cucumber seeds seem to have borne winter well and are growing in the nursery bed with the burning bushes and crape myrtles. Note to self on that front. Seriously. Will be interesting to see the results.

Not that I am lashed to a harvest as if life depended upon the haul. Fortunately. Just a new shoot here or a tiny leaf there, or a bud or a peach, as part of my daily prowl services my expectations. Well, hoping for a bit more peach-wise.

You, on the other hand, have an end very much in mind. I get that.

We are, as we have been, living in two very different spaces the last few years. And not just geographically, though dramatically so now.

Really, I’m thinking more about time than space. The luxury I have to carry such a short list of have-to-get-done items allows for watching birds or the clouds or the kids next door rather than keeping my shovel moving. Melon seeds sown Wednesday rather than Tuesday, just fine. Squash or cucumbers to be picked—if or when it’s time for them, then that suits.

Okay, okay, I admit my personality may be the greater variable. Do you think? Go ahead, laugh out loud.

As for you—tell me about your Santa Fe visit after you get back. Take pictures. Enjoy the kids when they come out this summer.

Be well, be good, behave. Indeed, convalesce.

Always,

srk

Around the Bend

Dear Maria,

Thanks for the photos. Perhaps email will do just fine. Still not as satisfying as unwrapping a letter, so to speak, but the words mean the same and that is all that matters in the end.

I do understand what you are saying about the desert, the quiet. Coincidentally—and nothing more than that—I thought about the desert in January. We had a couple of unseasonable shorts and t-shirt days, and as I sat out back and looked at the winter woods, I thought how noisy the visual. How a desert landscape would be so much quieter, so less busy.

I am sending along one picture. You will laugh. Just days after I wrote in Miscellany about leaving the area around the lake untended by my hand, the beavers decided to execute a major water release. One day-long flush, and then a shorter one the next. Lake at the lowest level since 2009 according to a neighbor.

Have no idea how long to full bowl, if ever. The local engineers will manage that issue. Along with the rains.

By the way, 3 baby herons and a set of 6 and a set of 10 goslings this spring. Gaggle right there.

And I do understand what you are saying about knowing what the future holds. Timetables like 3 to 6 months, or maybe a year, hardly seem meaningful guidance. Especially when you try to consider the needs of your family and your role at work.

Let me go with the obvious—too obvious, I guess, but. You need to take care of yourself before you can take care of others.

I suspect on that front—what waits ahead—there are two types of people. Those who want to see around the bend and the others, not so much. Of course, if you knew how your storyline would go, you would rethink some decisions. But the not knowing is the great democratic equalizer, and so we all do the best we can with what we can know in the here and now.

We shall see when we shall see. Trite, but true.

I saw the other day the temperature was scorching hot out there. Good grief!  Summer will be an inferno I reckon.

Stay cool, be well.

Yours,

srk

Tucson

Dear Maria,

Bird Nerd Alert: The other day I fired off a text to a neighbor that read “Hawks together. Dead pine. To the west.” I believe you would be one of the very small flock of friends to chuckle at that impulse. You may own up at your discretion, of course.

Otherwise, spring here comes in fits and starts—no explosion like a fireworks finale. More a rolling out, one week cherries blooming behind the Burger King, before that redbuds opening between the elms next to the Bi-Lo, this week the daffodils in my front bed that is such an eyesore every gardener in my family, this generation and all others before, is shamed.

But, spring and warmer.

Although only some yardwork is getting done, I pace myself fully aware we will scarcely recall how the world without leaf looks by the end of the month. The nursery, too, is very work-in-progress, the early stage. But come May.

I am deeply sorry to hear of your setback. At least the prognosis is good—or that is your word for it—and the kids are old enough to mostly keep their equilibrium as needed. Not that they won’t feel the distance and some anxiety.

Not how you thought the next stretch would go, but being blown off course unexpectedly is part and parcel of the ride. Vexing. Nerve-wracking.

Sorry, no need to belabor all that.

As for Tucson, all that came to my mind was Linda Ronstadt and the university of and desert—like of that I would know—and close to the border. Very close in my mind’s map. Tucson to Tucumcari. Hey, this isn’t Telluride. Okay, done with this nonsense. Hmm, you can be our personal correspondent from the Far West.  

However, your request that I serve as your state and regional reporter-at-large would be better served by a friend that, oh, takes the local paper and hangs with folks who chatter-up such matters.

Politics? Well, I would be unlikely to have Vlad, Xi, Kim, and Rodrigo over for a poker night, but I’m not a leader of the free world of a sort. 

I do feel your exhortation to write more often, and will, and willingly concede to emails so that I may include pictures—might shorten the text as a picture is, you know. Anticipate garden/nursery photos. Oh, and Max. Who turned 6 Sunday. Hound.

Hug the kids for me. Let me know you are settled in safely, and before long I suppose we will think you Countess of Cacti. Or not.

Your friend, in all things,

srk

A Wintry Mix

Dear Maria,

Ouch! I hoped you forgot my prediction regarding Trump’s blood sugar level. Unlike him apparently, I can drive by a Krispy Kreme and my A1C goes up 2 points. These days, a handful of sweet potato tots and I think I’ve summited the Everest of desserts.

Your robin story made me laugh out loud—with you, not at—and I am very sorry about your new car. But 100 robins, wow! I rarely see more than half-a-dozen robins at a time here.

A number of our local birds out back have settled the winter fling, or at least the mallards and eider ducks have. The geese, not quite. A few weeks ago the males regularly were thrashing about at each other, and yesterday an interloper was given a hostile reception down by the dam. I suspect rapprochement will reign soon as we tick away days until spring.

As for the predators, the pair of Red-shouldered hawks are back on the scene after seeming to vacate during the bad cold spell at the beginning of the year. I’ve seen them together half a dozen times during the past few weeks. Day before yesterday they were sitting together in the grandfather tree I sent you a picture of last summer. Truth be told, I misidentified them as Cooper’s hawks until taking a look with my glasses on. Just let that reality go without comment, please.

Oh, did I tell you about seeing one of these hawks sitting in a birch behind a house two blocks away? Yep, about 10 feet high—here’s the kicker, someone there is a pigeon fancier and has a kit of birds—7 to 12—that I often see circling the neighborhood in the morning when I walk Max. Conjures up gruesome buffet perhaps, but a hawk’s gotta do….

We’ve had another light snow and then yesterday a wintry mix of sleet and ice and rain that now is long gone. May touch 60 degrees a few times in the next two weeks. Still too early to post the days-to-spring or days-to-last-frost countdowns. Yet.

So I content myself with paging through seed and plant catalogs, and some days slipping out and snipping a few small interior branches off the elms and crape myrtles. Or just standing out in the nursery and thinking about when the plants and trees will break leaf after over-wintering in pots.

I suspect you will be at the roses in a few weeks. Lucky girl. Hugs to the family. May send along a story next week. We’ll see.

As for my dream last week that ended with one of those dramatic movie voiceovers proclaiming “Your next president, Jeff Sessions”, ‘nuff said.

Yours, of course,

srk