MY MEMORIAL GARDEN

 

Each season, as I walk around my yard, I look at all the beauty out there... most of my plants came from somebody - well, half of them, anyway. As I look at this or that camellia, clump of daffodils, even some of my trees, I think about the people that gave them to me - most of those folks are gone now - but as the beauty of their loving gift lives on - they live on.  I treasure each bloom, and my heart talks to the one who gave it to me. I send them a little prayer of thanks, be they here or moved on, and pray for their peace and comfort, wherever they are, and that they may have beauty in their current or new life.

        This morning, my grandfather's favorite peony opened. He died in 1954. At the time, I was his only grandchild. Our house in the Poconos has a tenth of a mile of road frontage, most of it planted in now very old peony bushes, all planted by Grandpop. My dad dug this one (and a few others) and brought them here. It’s like a Memorial garden, my place. Old friends and lovers, relatives and acquaintances, former students, neighbors, are all represented in my yard. Each plant, each bloom, is a token of love.

Just yesterday, an old pick-up pulled in the yard, with a middle aged guy and an elderly woman. I did not know them. The gentleman apologized for bothering me… but explained how his mother always made him slow down when they drove past my place. She sat there and just grinned the biggest grin. “Mama’s eye sight ain’t what it used t’ be,” he said, “But she can still see the bright colors of yer ‘zalyers and camalyers, and, what’s them things?” he said pointing to the peonies just opening. “Funny, ain’t it how the camelyers bloom in the winter time? Mama loves to see the red ones in the snow. Made me drive out in that snow last winter just to see your bushes.” The old lady was nodding her head up and down.

“Well, I prob’ly shun’da stopped an’ bothered ye, but mama seen ya out in the yard and wanted to say Thank ye fer bringing a bit of beauty to her world.” (Ye is not part of a religious group speak – it is just part of the old Eastern Shore dialect spoken by many of the old farmers and watermen.)

“Thank ya!” the old woman said as he backed the truck back out onto the road. She waved a little wave with gnarled, tanned fingers, aged by years of hard work. I could just see those hands plucking chickens, pickin’ crabs, canning tomatoes and preserves. She would have recipes in her head for the best pickled watermelon rind, and know exactly how long to cook soft-shelled crabs. I wondered how many diapers those hands had changed and washed and hung on the line to dry. How many little shoes had she tied? How hard had her life been? But how much joy had been there also? How many children did she have? Had she had to bury any of them? And how lucky she was to have a son to take her out on a nasty winter’s day to see my red camellias in the snow, or pull in my yard to thank me for bringing a bit of beauty to the world. That is love. And that is why I work so hard out there.

But sometimes beauty comes in different packages… not always flowers. Living here in a rural area, I get to see a lot of critters people in cities just never get to see. (Although we DID have a MOOSE walk up the street in front of our house in Portland, Maine!) Some critters are all too obvious, the deer running across the road or nibbling on the shrubbery, the coons getting into the left over cat food… but, some of them are not obvious at all, just a chance sighting every now and then. Possum sightings are few, as are seeing foxes, both gray and red, but they are there. Looking up as a shadow passes over, one might see the local bald eagle or a red-tailed hawk. Looking down, there is a world of little critters, blue tailed skinks being the most obvious, and on to the tiny critters with 6 legs.

As I type this, there is an orchard oriole in the ground level birdbath. But he seems to notice any movement at the window, so the pictures come up empty. They are rare around here. Yet cardinals are common as are the bright, flashy little goldfinches that hangout in my yard. Might it be all the thistle feeders I have? Let it be said, I do not take them for granted. I do ply them with feeders filled of their favorite snacks! Of my 4 pairs of cardinals that have spent the winter here, I have found the nesting places of 3 of the couples and their babies. One family is in the huge Acuba outside the bathroom window, the other 2 families are in camellias. I am not sure about couple #4.

Once in a while, looking straight ahead holds some amazing surprises. I almost leaned my shovel against this tree trunk – caught it just in time – and came inside to grab the camera. This happy couple were fortunately still there resting on the tree trunk. Even driving by on the tractor and loading tons of mulch a couple feet away did not disturb them. But then, they are Luna moths, and they only fly around at night.

If you know me at all, you know how difficult it is to walk and do things, but staying as active as possible helps my serenity. Working out in the yard and having my little veggie garden “does something” for me. There is a sense of peace playing in the dirt, and a sense of comfort from being surrounded by so much beauty and the gifts from those who love and have loved me. And there is always the 4 legged company I have whenever out in the yard, the little yellow cat that rolls over to get his tummy rubbed. He, too, was a gift… a gift that blew in on a hurricane, Hurricane Isabel. I wonder who loved him before I did. This is his home now, and he guards it fiercely. I don’t know for sure what happened to him to make him leave his first home all those years ago, but he, too, has found peace here.

Life is good.

GROUNDHOG’S DAY 2011 and 2 VISITORS

THIS IS THE DAY when so many of you got so much snow and ice… my Cousin Sandy measured 51 inches of snow and ice on the ground in her back yard. Friends wrote to me of taking an axe out to chop thru the ice on top of the snow to get to something they could shovel. Their stories were amazing as were the temperatures… one cousin had –8 degrees F, while another was at 34 degrees above  in Alaska where it should have been below zero.

Here, on the Eastern Shore, we had been warned of “significant rainfall,” and got about half an inch. But most wonderful of all, the temps soared to 67 degrees. 67 DEGREES!!!!! OMG! After a hectic morning of DR visits and errands,  I headed out to the yard to quickly plant the 2 flats of pansies I got at Bobbie’s on Sunday – a Better Late Than Never Christmas Gift!   I worked as fast as I could getting the pansies in around the birdbath close to where the bright red coleus and strobilanthes were last summer, and in the Circle, around the little critters’ graves. The ground was soft and wet, still lots of leaves on the ground and the kind of debris one has after a rough winter.

I love pansies, and part of the fun of living on the Eastern Shore is having pansies all winter and into the spring. These pansies had been sitting at Bobbie’s for a while waiting for all of us to find a time when we could get together. Each time we planned lunch, it snowed. The first time I told Bobbie I couldn’t come up because it was going to snow, she laughed at me thinking I was making a joke. I wasn’t. That was the beginning of our bitter cold, snowy winter. So, the pansies sat and waited.

Our morning started with a visit with the Onley Possum Weather prognosticator… Opie Possum (or O P –Onley Possum, Only Possum! Official Predictor of GOOD weather)… We do not have Groundhogs here on the shore. They would drown if they tried to burrow in our soil, too close to sea level. We also do not have chipmunks or porcupines or bears. We also don’t have rocks or stones, in spite of the pictures of them in my garden, unless they are brought in from other places. Most of my stones are from PA, a few from Maine… I digress, again. Anyway, Opie showed up for a bedtime snack to see if there was anything left from breakfast, since possum time is the reverse of people time. As I saw him saunter across the yard toward the cat food left-overs, I made note of there being NO SHADOW! Spring is right around the corner! YEA! Of course, that corner just might be 6 weeks away, who knows. But Opie was getting a snack as I hurried for my camera. So you will just have to trust me on the NO shadow part. 

Anyway, Possum in bed, Pansies in the ground, I hurried inside to get cleaned up for yet another Dr’s appointment when I heard a flurry of activity out the front window. My new resident hawk was back looking for HIS snack, but so far, for all the times I have seen him out here, I have yet to find any feathers around. I have never seen him make off with any little critters. Now, he might have caught some of the mice that have built their little tunnels in the ground under the feeders… I don’t know.

Handsome fellow, isn’t he? Just posing for his mug shot. Um, turn the other way, please.

Thank you.

I told him to head on down to Rat Trap Creek where there are a couple of muskrats, so I hear, that pretend to be weather prognosticators, but, frankly, I think they are phonies, just like the Pungoteague Possum they talk about on the radio. WE all know that was roadkill JD found and pretended was a live possum whispering in his ear that Spring was on its way. What’s with these people? The official weather Possums have always lived right here and we always give them a special treat on Possum Day. But we also protect them from the press and being taken advantage of by reporters like Puxatawney Phil. That is animal abuse! Poor thing.

From time to time, friends bring me their baby possums to be groomed as weather prognosticators.

Some work out, others, well, others just won’t have anything to do with it.

And that’s the end of this tail. 

MORE CRITTER ENTERTAINMENT

As I mentioned in a previous post, White Ears has had company lately. They have more energy than I can even imagine. (If I had half their energy, I would get this window washed and then maybe I could get better pictures, ya think?) Anyway, they periodically make a great leap to one of the feeders, sometimes chasing off a Cardinal. See the red blurr on the left? Papa Cardinal was not happy about it. They can't actually eat from the BIG feeder, but the grackles spill enough that the doves are well fed and there is enough left over for the furry pigs. Hmmm, come to think about it, I had better go fill that feeder, it is supposed to get HOT today.

ALI BABA, WHITE EARS AND JUMPER

What a blessing it is to have the time and to be in a place where one can be entertained by the other critters that share our little space with us. The squirrels, White Ears and her friends, have been most entertaining on a daily basis running up and down the redbud, jumping from branch to branch. Wednesday morning, there were two rabbits in the yard across the street that seemed to be having tons of fun. One kept running toward the other… lets just call them Jumper and Runner… Runner would run straight for Jumper who would go straight up in the air as Runner passed under him. Runner then would turn around and have another go at Jumper who would, of course, jump straight up as Runner passed under him again. What is so amazing is they kept doing this for over 10 minutes. Well, they would run-jump about 6 or 7 times, eat a bit of clover for a minute, two at most, and then do the run-jump thing again. It was hilarious! A rabbit’s version of Leap Frog?
A baby grackle had a bad experience on his fledging day, he landed on the ground and had no idea what to do. Spook saw it and went out to encourage him. Right? Well, actually, it was interesting. Spook never laid one paw on the little bird, and he had plenty of opportunity, he was less than 2 feet away. I heard all the commotion out in the back part of the yard and I could see Spook… and I could see the little black bird. Spook was lying down on the ground just watching. I think every grackle for miles was in the back yard screaming at the 2 of them. What a racket! I went out back, picked up the bird and put him in a tree. Spook followed and sat on the ground, just in case. So, I decided to “hide” the little thing from Spook and maybe give him a chance to rest… I put him in an empty hanging flower pot, put it in a better tree… the grackle family and friends got quieter, Spook lost interest and started chasing a toad… After a while, the parents (?) came down and sat with the baby in the tree giving him instructions, no doubt. Eventually he hopped up to the rim of the pot, flapped his little wings and made it to the next tree, then the next tree, then the next. The family reunion was over, the squawking was limited to the parents and Spook stretched out under the chair for a nap.
I told Spook he needed to be up on the car port defending his crunchies. The Blue Jays had been there stealing his food. What is worse, the grackles have been watching the Jays and now a cup of dry food can disappear in a little less than 2 hours. I have named the ring-leader Ali Baba as the rest are his trained thieves.

Ali BAba checking out the carport before making a mad dash for the cat food. Can you see his little behind with tail sticking up in the air on the heart shaped crunchie dish?
The pictures are really bad, I know, but they were taken thru the Plexiglas storm door.

A better picture of Ali Baba......

HEY! WHERE'S BREAKFAST?

HEY! WHERE'S BREAKFAST?*

*Or dinner, lunch? My snack? Well, you get the idea.
The truth is, the little pig cleaned it all up yesterday... ain't nary a nibble left! And I have been busy getting a paper done, sigh, so I have not been out to feed the pigs, uh, birds - or, as it appears, the athletic fuzzy four-legged!

C'mon, where'd ya hide it? I know it is here somewhere!
YOOOOOOUU HOOOOOOOOUUU! Hey! Get out here! NOW! I don't eat thistle seed - believe me I 've tried it. I'm gonna die of starvation!

PEEPERS

Spring Peeper Pseudacris crucifer

Interesting name, but I think I'll stick to "peeper"








Spring Peeper (RealAudio sound sample) can be found on

http://www.naturesound.com/frogs/pages/peeper.html Now multiply that sound by a hundred or so........... and you have my back yard!

The picture is from this site from this site -

A Pony Tale

A pony tale.

A gazillion years ago, back when I was in 5th grade in snow covered North Tonawanda, NY, my teacher, Mrs. Clark, read a book to us each day after lunch. It gave the slow pokes a chance to get back from lunch (we went home back then) and unwind from the running and craziness of the lunch break. One day she started the book, Misty of Chincoteague, by Marguerite Henry. My imagination took flight. I promised myself that one day I would go to school on that island where kids actually rode their ponies to school. From snowy NY to Chincoteague would take a miracle! The really weird thing is, it actually happened – but not quite as I envisioned it. Chincoteague was one of the schools I was assigned to in my first year of teaching in Virginia. I was itinerant, so I taught on the mainland in the morning and at Chincoteague High School in the afternoon. I was real disappointed to find out that the kids didn’t actually ride their ponies to school.
After a year or two, I taught some of the Beebe kids, from the family mentioned in the book. Misty was still alive though elderly. The Beebe kids made sure I got to go to their home to meet Misty on more than one occasion. I have pictures buried in a box somewhere… By the time all was said and done, I had taught 3 generations of Beebe kids. But there was only one Misty. I count Misty on my list of famous people I have met. Don’t tell Katherine Hepburn, OK?

Next week will be the annual Pony Swim and Pony Penning. Though I have lived here on the shore 40+ years, I had never been to the Pony Penning until a few years ago. Well, I hate crowds for one thing, heat for another, and then there’s the thing about feeding the mosquitoes, the alternate state bird here. (And you thought it was the Cardinal! HA!) I am not here to say I approve or disapprove of the way things are done… I know the vets swear to me the ponies are not hurt in this process, but doesn’t trauma count for anything? Citing worse examples (hunting mustangs out West with helicopters for example) doesn’t make it any better, and let’s face it, any animal that is sold or taken away from its mother is traumatized. You got a pet? Is it still with its mother? For that matter, are you still with yours? Well, you know what I mean.
Anyway, the herd needs to be thinned periodically as the island is only so big and will sustain only so many horses. The herd somehow or another belongs to the Chincoteague Fire Department… I still wonder about that deal… but they do look after the animals, make sure they get their shots and regular physical exams, etc. So the last week in July, they round up a bunch of them, swim them across the channel and drive them into town to the carnival grounds where the young ones are auctioned off on Thursday. All the proceeds go to the Fire department.
I have been fortunate to watch the swim from a boat, not up on the shore in the crowd of several thousand. It is quite an experience. If there is a real tiny new born, they take it aboard a barge so it doesn’t have to swim. Gee, how nice. I guess they see the ponies as ponie$ and that’s it. The ponies swim across at slack tide. That is the point between high and low tide when the tide is not pulling particularly either way. They claim high tide is easier on the ponies than low tide as they do not hit and scrape their legs on the bottom as easily. Now the truth is, the ponies DO swim the channels themselves when they want to. On some parts of Assateague they do it frequently. They even go out in the ocean and stand in the surf on very hot days or on days when the mosquitoes are real bad. So it is not something they have never experienced – except for the babies. And the firemen are on horseback swimming right along with the herd. They call them Saltwater Cowboys.
The national park service tries to protect the herds from the public rather than the other way around, as the ponies suffer more at the hands of the public than the people who occasionally get bitten or kicked. I am sure those folks would not agree with me, but if they had kept their distance, they would not get hurt. However, the people who ignore the signs telling them PLEASE DO NOT FEED THE PONIES are the real culprits. They teach the ponies to be moochers and that people mean food even if it is in the form of potato chips or nachos. So then when the next poor fool comes along and decides to pet the nice pony (they are wild animals, dolt!) and the pony bites because his space is invaded or there is no food in the hand that wants to touch… well, who’s fault is that exactly? Not the pony’s fault!
I have seen people try to put their kid on the pony’s back, pose for the camera, etc and then wonder why the pony gets nasty. Hey! The last people had apples and candy, where’s yours? So now the ponies are behind fences for the most part and kept almost out of sight. If you are one of the lucky ones, you might get to see who put that pile of pony poop in the middle of the road, but most of the wanderers are chased back behind that fence. And it is a shame, too. It used to be fun to see them amble along the road or run in the surf on a hot summer day. They still have that opportunity if they can figure how to get around the fences that are there to keep them safe – or if you go up (or down) the beach far enough and away from the public beach section.
Should you decide to come to the pony penning, book your room about a year in advance as the shore is over loaded during Pony Penning week.
If you have a chance, read Marguerite Henry’s Misty of Chincoteague. Misty was a real pony… I remember the day Misty died and the Beebe boy (who was in my class at that moment) was called to come home. It was a serious and solemn occasion like a famous local hero had died. Well, indeed she did. Misty put Chincoteague on the map. I remember a new teacher from away asking where the Beebe boy was, she had seen him in my class but he hadn’t shown up for her’s. I said, “Misty died.” Stupid me, I thought the whole world knew who Misty was.
“Who’s that? His mother?” she asked. I gave her one of those incredulous looks, blinked a few times and said, “No, Misty, the pony.” Like what planet did you drop in from?
“He went home because a pony died?” she asked and you could see she was getting ticked. “Well he will just get a zero for today!” Not that he would have cared, but I suggested she not do that. Even if Misty had been “just any old pony” it would have been a good enough reason for me.
“But don’t you realize Misty IS Chincoteague! Do you mean to tell me you never heard of Chincoteague ponies? You never read Misty of Chincoteague? You really don’t know who Misty is?”
See www-pub.naz.edu:9000/~csick4/misty.html.
Maybe I will get back to Chincoteague and the pony penning one day – if Boy Bobby ever comes home to live again. But, maybe I will have to be content to just see something running thru the marsh a half a mile away on my next trip up there. And I will remember Misty and that miracles do happen, just not the way we plan them.

note: most photos are borrowed. Thanks!

Morning

It is morning here in my little corner of the world, an almost June morning. For the last 50 years of my life that would have meant the excitement of school being almost over. Now it is just the excitement of being able to slowly take in the beauty of the day.
I missed the sunrise this morning. It was early, I was late. I am learning to sleep in a little later. I still wake up at 4, but now, instead of coming out here and rushing around to get some work done on the computer, well, I often just totter back to bed. I am learning to take another little morning nap. I never was able to do that before, the pressures of LIFE, the worry of school, or the responsibility of whomever I had to take care of kept me from napping. I am still up before 7, but seldom before 6 anymore. I feel lazy saying that! I have my cup of tea in front of the computer. Snuffy seldom gets up with me in the morning. He prefers dreaming in his window bed or watching the morning’s activities if the window is open. Snuffy gets in the window at the first sound of morning, the first insistent chirping as some little feathered creature says his morning prayers. Or are they shouting threats to the worms below? “Are you ready to die? I am hungry!” Whatever it is, Snuff removes himself from sleeping on my feet or next to my legs and hops over into the window to check things out.
Eventually I have read enough or have typed long enough to need a break. I get up from the computer and look out to see if the outside crew is around. Sometimes Pumpkin beats me to it and bangs on the back door. “Feed me!” he yowls. Or worse, he gives me that poor starving kitty look with the silent meow that says he is too weak from starvation to even manage a sound. If I don’t hurry up with the food, he will fall over dead and won’t I be sorry?
I look around for Spook. Usually he is asleep in the plastic lawn chair that no one ever gets to sit in anymore because he now owns it. I scoop up a cup of Chef’s Blend, try to remember what they had to eat the night before – god forbid I should ever give them the same thing twice! I grab what I hope is the appropriate can and quietly go out the back door.
Cats fed and ears rubbed (a quick tick check done) I stand and breathe in the morning air. This morning the air was a bit on the heavy side. It was already 70° at 6:30. The scent of honeysuckle lies on the air as I start my gratitude list. Well, actually this is my second gratitude list for the day. The first one was for being able to get out of bed and make it down the hall under my own power!
I think about how great it is to wake up out here in the boondocks where I can smell honeysuckle in the morning, not exhaust fumes. I hear a woodpecker off an acre or two away rat-a-tat-tapping on a tree. I think about how lucky I am to share the place where woodpeckers live and to have the ability to hear them. I listen to the morning bird songs. What a gift to hear those songs. I must remember to put some more peanuts out for the blue jays, sunflower seeds for my cardinal family.
I decided to take a stroll out on the eastern acre. I have all these little paths thru what used to be my pine woods before the pine bark beetle and then the guys with the BIG power saws reduced my acreage to weeds, stumps, and wood rubble. I had them shove all the debris into one big pile (more or less) so I could keep pathways clear with the mower and wander out here in the morning. The big pile is habitat to any number of critters. There is a tunnel under everything and pathways beside some of the big hardwood trees that were just shoved out of the way, their wood sadly having no value here. They carted away the 100+foot pine trees. There are places where I can see the deer have slept. Often I can see their hoof prints in the soft earth or mud. A few of the birds fly up as I quietly walk along smelling the honeysuckle, marveling at its color and form, amazed at how it seems to be able to grow just everywhere, turning bare, dead limbs, trimmings from the yard, and piled up deadfall branches into a small hill of flowers and fragrance. Many of the birds just look at me, used to my morning wanderings, but with a cautious eye just in case, just in case. You never know with humans, they are so unpredictable.

This morning brings bad news on the air. My first mosquito for 2006. Rats! So now I must decide whether to wear long sleeves or spray that yucky (but effective) stuff on my arms when I go out. I have been battling with ticks already for a couple of months – it was a warm winter. I even had to have my hair cut down to what feels like nakedness to me - I don’t like it much, but I got a bunch of tiny ticks in my hair last week and my hair was too thick to be able to get them all – so……………. Well, I feel bald.

A couple of the pathways I keep reasonably weed free (mostly poison ivy free) are covered with moss. The holly, scrub trees and sweet gum, locust and maple keep some parts of the path shaded enough to let the moss grow nicely. The hardwoods really grew fast once the tall pines were out of the way. The pines are being very slow at growing back on the eastern acre. The western acres have pines up around 12 feet or more. Not bad for, oh, what has it been, 5 yrs? 6?
The path comes out to a fern garden, one of three I protect and love, but this one has a different variety of fern than the other two. I must look them up to see what they are called. I walk past the dogwood, weeks past blooming now, but my mind can still see the beautiful flowers it had this year. Past my studio, I see the yellow iris glowing with the morning sunlight with the darkness of the woods behind it. Robins hop about ears cocked to the ground listening, listening. The early bird gets the early worm. Hey, isn’t that life? I guess you just have to decide whether you are the early bird or the worm!
The magnolia is about to bloom. I see the promise of its great swelling buds and can hardly wait to smell them. There is something magical about these great flowers.
I have several mulberry trees. They are very busy places this time of year. The deer come by early in the morning or in the evening and snack on the lowest branches. Then during the day, the birds and squirrels sit and dine and chatter, sometimes fussing at each other over the ownership of a particular branch only to be chased away by the real landlord, the blue jay.

The earliest morning buses roll by, still empty, on their way to pick up their precious cargo. I am still shocked that I do not miss getting up and going off to the old brain factory after, what is it, almost 58 years on one side of the desk or the other? No, I was right to quit while I could still walk if only short distances and have a chance to enjoy my yard even if most of it is still a jungle. Whenever I meet other teachers in a restaurant or in a store, they tell me how much they envy me and my decision. They tell me how the new girl (my replacement) has had such a horrible time, how bad the kids are, the struggle to pass the exams, and how long until they, too, can retire. So instead of feeling sad as the buses roll by, I breathe a sigh of gratitude that I survived 38 years. So what if I couldn’t make it to 40! The physical pain had gotten just too great. I turn and slowly pick my way over the rough ground and head toward the house and my bottle of Starbucks.

Coonie Bears!!!!!

What? You have never heard of Coonie Bears? Well, long, long ago, and probably far away, I learned that raccoons were members of the bear family. Well, sorta... cousins, like. Anyway, in order to remember this, my juvenile brain changed their name to coonie bear so I could keep all this zoological information straight. Anyway, I mention this since we have been having regular visits from several misc. coonie bears, probably because the picky eaters out on the car port (Pumpkin and Spook) sometimes do not eat all their dinner. And maybe because we have a compost pile out back... ya think? Perhaps even the bird feeders might contribute to the problem, tho I have started taking the feeders down and locking them in the furnace room at night. I do that only because the coonie bears are so distructive. Most of my feeders are now made out of metal or have metal wire cages around them so chewing is not very effective. However, they dump the contents and that gets expensive. Then they go after the non-metal feeders. More expensive.

I keep bungee cords on the garbage cans and stash the metal cans with bird seed under a picnic table AND bungee them to boot, so that keeps me from having to clean up the trash on the carport every morning, but the little buggers get into everything anyway. A few minutes ago there was a loud crash and I looked and looked, but could find no evidence of their misdeeds.

Two nights ago they destroyed a big begonia I wintered over in the house and had just taken out with most of the rest of the house plants. There is a mama coonie bear and two little ones who have to investigate everything. They got into the greenhouse (since the door has been removed for the summer) and pulled the Christmas cactus out of their pots, knocked over a few other things, and totally wrecked the begonis. Their stems are so fragile, ya know?

Anyway, there was this crash, and I guess I will find out what they broke tomorrow as I sure didn't see it tonight. What I did see, however, and wish I could have recorded was a big pink cloud in the eastern sky (the sun had set) and there was lightning inside the cloud. It was not coming down to earth nor was it coming up from earth. It was completely confined to the cloud. It was having its own internal storm! I have never seen that before. But I believe I have felt that way once or twice. Maybe it is common and I just have managed all these years without seeing it. Maybe not. I heard no thunder. I came in and checked the radar and saw a storm cloud off shore - maybe 20 miles. I wish I could have gotten a pic of it. Anyway, I didn't, but here are a couple coonie bears...

and Punkie and Spook. I guess you can figure out which one is the Pumpkin. And Spook is Spook because he was so spooky - everything spooked him. His first month here he never even got within 20 feet of me. I won him over with some Turkey leftovers at Christmas, tossing him pieces, each one a little bit closer until after a couple of days of this, he got brave enough to take a piece from my hand. He is still shy of strangers, and runs at the least unusual noise. Punk, however, would roll over at the devil's feet and meow to have his belly rubbed. He follows me all around the yard. No, that is not quuite true. He runs ahead of where he thinks I am heading, throwing himself down in my path so I have to step over him - or give in and bend over and do the tummy rub routine. Did I mentiion Punk never shuts up? He yows and yows constantly or at least as soon as he has me in sight. sigh. Someday I will tell you his story... or at least what I believe is his story. But, for now, I am tired and it is past my bedtime. Till then......