Eclipse Notes

  I was sick --ironically because I had winnowed a grove of sunflowers on Sunday, August 20. Sunflower detritus irritated my pores and that night I was unable to sleep more than a couple hours of slightly tormented exhaustion.

I had special glasses to watch the eclipse. They are still safely in a drawer.

The time for the phenomenon came but I was spent.

Stumbling through some necessary chores, I walked out to my front porch. Looking down while the rest of the country was looking up, I saw the most remarkable shadows. I grabbed my smart phone and took some pictures.

The shadows were on the concrete area supporting my planter.

They were on my front sidewalk.

They were on my neighbor’s driveway.

And they were wondrous. When I came back inside, the house had darkened. I had to turn on the kitchen light. Everything was still. The cat who always comes down when I am in the kitchen, stayed upstairs, sleeping.

So I missed the eclipse.

And yet I didn’t.

Shazaam.

Grand Consolation

After I signed all the papers required to buy a home, I discovered that there was a raspberry patch in my new backyard. I’ve always told people that had I known, I would have paid more for the house. 

Every year the patch, now the size of a pickup truck bed and four feet high, produces blooms then berries, which every year I eat before I can harvest enough to make something wonderful with them. 

Not this year. 

Ah, the bushes flourish. And bloom. And produce hundreds of green berries. I monitor their progress, awaiting scarlet fruition. That never comes. What blushes in the morning, disappears by the afternoon. 

One day, entering my yard from the alley garage, I discovered why. As I stepped onto the path, a dozen birds flew out of the raspberries. 

It’s my own fault. I hang birdfeeders and fill bird baths. You would think that would be enough. But when I walk out my back door, as many as six squirrels scurry away. They take the bird seed. The birds take the berries. 

I now buy raspberries at the grocery store and take consolation in the giant blooms of my hibiscus (which neither birds nor squirrels consume). 

Although I am a little worried about the small bunny I saw the other day.