April 4, 2021 – Easter Sunday
Hoppy Spring! From my dried raindrop spattered dining room window (boy do they need a good cleaning!), the sun is still above the tree tops … at nearly 7pm. Yay! I took my daily constitutional (walk) earlier than usual today while the sun was still high in the western sky. Once that sun drops, so does the temp and tonight is to be around 27 degrees. Too chilly for this bunny to be hopping around at twilight!
I have a lab in my back yard … a sweet guest who is not social and cannot be trusted to be with the other dog guests I have here at this time. Too bad. She’d be lovely as a one and only … but with 5 others in and out the back slider door and running through the house and taking naps on my bed … it is not an option to have her up here with us. And that hurts my heart. She is happy, though, outside most of the time. If I bring her in when she’s not ready to sleep (with the other guests tucked safely in my bedroom), she stands on her hind legs and scratches the door or windows wanting out. Odd. I’ve never had an unsocial dog here before. This is new for me. I bring her in as early/late as she’ll let me … and as has been the pattern, around 4am, she is ready to go out and camp again. So, needless to say – with her going out at 4am, I as the doorkeeper … have been up, too. I am, for pun’s sake – dog tired! I’m also not thrilled that she had dug up everything I planted this week in my 4 garden beds … or that she killed a juvenile bunny (and buried it in my garden) after jumping off my deck. (I’m thankful she didn’t break a leg as it’s a good 8′ high!). She goes home on Wednesday and I hope I have her departure date correct as I am ready.
Today was to be rainy and 37 … we got 46 and sunshine. I’ll take it. I dropped a chocolate rabbit at a friend’s earlier … she had two gray whales as guests on Friday night … singing in the sound while gulping down ghost shrimp! I wish she had called me. It would have been delightful to hear a little whale singing.
It’s been a week of yardwork and dogs and sore muscles and my first vaccine. Let the trumpets blare! The light at the end of the tunnel is no longer a train! Yahoo.
Spring has sprung across this island and my first tulips are opening up … red and yellow … the parrot/fringed ones are still fat buds waiting … my daffodils are almost gone. The early fruit trees … are now almost bare … tiny green leaves replacing the white and pink blossoms. The late fruit trees and forsythia (which means “spring sunshine and anticipation”) are in full bloom. Fat branches of heavy aroma. Something, unseen to me, fragranced the air so delicately it stopped me along the way and I just had to stand and sniff. It was lovely!
By the time I get off island for my next eye appointment, the cherry trees at the University of WA will be all in leaf … their gorgeous, pink, perfumed petals will be scattered along the walkways. Too bad I’ll miss them. It’s a gorgeous sight.
Tonight’s hour walk was the same route I take almost daily … out my front gate, and fifty steps to the streetlamp … take a right and go another 2000 steps to the end of the cliff walk. I saw a handful of bunnies … none of them had baskets of chocolate, so I am assuming that none of them were THE Easter bunny. Too bad. I could have used a jelly bean or two. When I was a kid we had this big book … I mean a thin book, but large (maybe 20″ tall by 10″ wide). I wish I could find that book again. It was an Easter book and had the most beautifully illustrated drawings of all things Easter and Spring … bunnies, chicks, eggs. I don’t now remember if the image of what I think the Easter Bunny would look like comes from that book or another or my own imagination … but I picture him as a white bunny with a black top hat and cane … carrying a sizable hand basket, wearing a vest and colored, patchwork pants. Hmmm. I had plenty of antibios as a kid so I’m wondering if I was on something at the time of this image-forming!
Today I noticed a new front archway in front of the house just past my favorite Silver Poplar (the tree with glossy, deep green leaves on one side/soft, white fur on the underside that are on slender stems causing the leaves to quiver in even the slightest breeze). The new archway will look pretty when finished. As with most everything on this island … it’ll take a while to complete as “island time” doesn’t mean mai tais or coconut slushes here … it means something that should take a week will take 3 months to accomplish.
The chi-weenie further down, Melvin or Morris or some M name, who is a yapper … was not out today. All was blissfully quiet on the western front. A deer walked through the meadow – completely ignoring me. I came to where the empty lot is (I think that area is sinking!) and looked out over the water – deep, deep blue today and a few white caps – no whales, no birds, no boats – just bright, shining snow-capped mountains beyond and the little beachfront area of town bathed in sunlight below the cliff – all looking so picturesque on a lazy Sunday afternoon. The tide was really far out … sandbars were visible that I haven’t seen before. The gentleman at the end and I chatted – he pointed them out to me. Crazy what you miss if you aren’t “looking”.
On my way back home, I was looking in the gulley area … the ditch alongside the road. And that’s when I saw my first one. The rushes are up! Horizontally striped, brown and green, rather penile looking (Mom Nature can be so graphic!) … there one stood … in the grass alongside the ditch. Now, normally, one wouldn’t even notice this 3″ beauty but I’ve been looking for these things for 2 months now … and today, there it was. I continued on and saw another … and then two more … and then a cluster of 20! As I got closer to the marshy area where the last of the skunk weed was still putrefying the air (omg – so pretty but so stinky!) I saw the little heads of the rushes peeping up … hundreds of them! Yay! They are here! I’m not sure how much longer the skunk weed will be flowering but … seriously, so bad. All last week whenever I’d walk past, I’d hasten my pace and hold my breath as much as I could until I was past that stretch. It was so bad I could taste it. Yuck.
Anyway – in the week to come I’ll be watching those rushes unfurl their top flowers and become some character out of a Dr. Seuss book … all Grinchy green and fuzzle-wuzzly.
I came home, got some water, checked on the furry ones and went back out on the second half of my walk … down the street, around the cul de sac near the corner into town … through the woods. The tall, tall trees stand at the end of the road before you turn to town … all piney and dark. The pinecones have fallen and the trail was littered with them. They haven’t been pulverized yet by footsteps so instead of looking at the holly bushes that tower over my head or the ferns and fauna … I watch my footing. The cones cover the root knobs and I’m not in the mood for a face plant. One hundred and twenty paces later I’m out at the road, take a left to that light post and another left back onto the street towards home. In the waning sunshine my shadow walks ahead of me – looming vastly taller than I am. I am hoping that somehow the sunlight has distorted my width but I’m pretty sure the girth is all mine! I tell my fat shadow to keep at it!
Once home I turn on the radio … set to the local news station … and turn it off after a minute. I’ve been removing myself from the news as much as possible. I’ve had enough political strife to last two lifetimes. But, when I do watch or listen to one, why am I not (that) surprised to hear that the idiocy is still going on? Another lunatic/more officers injured and dead. More assaults on Asians. More this or that. Laws to restrict voting. People thinking mask wearing is political. What is wrong with our society? And, why can’t our elected officials (both sides) just do their damn jobs … without breaking the law, without paying (underage) women for sex, without causing harm or “joking” about racism, hacking into an opponent’s emails or calling for executions of people who are not like-minded? When did this all become so … normal?
I should have left the radio off. I’ll play some music instead. One newsletter that I subscribe to had squid music this week … maybe I can find one with whales singing. I think if the rushes heard them … they’d grow faster.
Have a nice night!