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| Last summer's hydrangea moving gently toward earth. |
It feels like one of those days. No new adventures. The Things I get to do today will be "catch up," "pick up," "tidy up," "clean up." The only adventure is in prepositions, but not everything is "up." Most of it will be outside, with the chickens, in the yard, in the soil, down to earth.
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| Garden soil, freshly tilled by the Gang of Five |
As I'm tidying up in the back yard, the girls are safe to roam out of the hen pen. Their soft conversation is soothing as a summer breeze.
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| A primrose missed by the chickens-- no claw or beak signatures on the leaves. |
Red earthworms zip back into the dark, wet dirt like released rubber bands, their dense cover of leaves having been ripped off an instant before. The hens are quick with eye and beak, tooth and claw. All the bugs and slugs are dispatched with a gulp and most of the plants get a strong-footed going-over. It is not gentle.
There is no rush. Rake a few leaves here. Stack wood there. Pick up branches downed from the last good tree-pruning wind. Head out of the clouds, mind away from the computer, thoughts free to rest--body and soul down to earth.
perhaps all leaves eventually break down into their lovely skeletal parts, but i know that the rhododendren in Seattle did: i could walk through the grove late in the fall and pick up handfuls of the silvery-gray leaf shapes, delicate but sturdy enough to decorate a bulletin board, perhaps a package?
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