Yard Work

Yard is a joke, I really don't have a yard, I have a clearing in the woods, still, good to get started. Clippers and sling-blade. So much rain the moisture content in the stalks of things ruins an old set of clothes. I turn green, finally have to come in and bathe. Late afternoon I make a vat of Shrimp Fried Rice, enough for several days and a sample for Pegi at the museum. I like taking her food, she raves, a little praise goes a long way. Fox at the compost pile. I watched pretty closely, meaning I glanced occasionally. She liked the smoked jowl I cooked the butter beans with, all that fat so early in the spring, probably a good thing for her, also the salt. She's losing her winter coat. I'd like a picture of her, but I don't take pictures, which I have always found odd about myself. Always been around photographers, but I have no record of myself or any of the things or houses I've built. I don't even know how many houses I've built, maybe two dozen; I can't remember some places I've lived, others are just a blur, an out of focus snapshot. An interesting gall on one sumac stem, looked, and colored like an onion dome Greek Orthodox church. I sliced it open and there were two worms, both of whom I'd sliced in two. They had taken over the cambium layer, routed it through their gall, so they could take whatever it was, the nutrients. I don't know what they are, if they become something else or not, my knowledge of galls is nonexistent, I only know what to call one, what they look like. I've sliced a lot of them open, there're always worms inside, so I take that as a rule: most galls are caused by worms. I talk with my older daughter and she wants me there, for graduation from college, and her sister's graduation from High School, next May, and I can agree to that, but the odds of me getting to her final project directing a main stage play, in February, is more problematic, there'll be weather to consider, all that shit. I could crawl there, with a bison robe, under threat of freezing to death, and probably survive. Neither here nor there, she wants me, at a point, where she can direct her anger, why she really called.