Natural World

Limited as I am, hands tied behind my back, I still feel compelled to say, the fox would never ask permission. Foxness, right? I see it clearly. Being of or like a fox. The marching band only added confusion. Our beat is out of time. Acting on a whim. Let me explain. Like that. Bursts of understanding. If we're lucky, we get the fox on tape. She was at the compost pile. Fifty% leafed out, and the blackberry is starting to bloom. A lovely invasive plant. It and sumac are the first plants anywhere there's sunlight, then the poplars shade them out. So still and lovely this morning that I drove out down the creek, went through the ford a few times, to clean the wheel wells, found a few morels by chance (I'd stopped to look at a plant I didn't recognize). I'd been thinking about plant succession up until then, but afterwards all I could think about was dinner. I'm going to have them with shallots in a cream sauce over egg noodles. A simple but delicious meal. Trish is taking off tomorrow, to make up for an extra day she worked, and Pegi has meetings and a power lunch for most of her day. TR and I holding down the fort. Put away tables and chairs, and then I wanted to stay off my feet for another day, so I went through some Carter things and read some letters. I think Mary was a better wife than mother, she's always foisting the two boys off on her mother or Uncle Harlan. Retrace my tracks going home. A thousand feet in elevation, in seven-and-a-half miles, and there's a noticeable difference in the timing, what the same plants are doing at different elevations. Myriad factors at play, a complex algorithm. You'd want to docent the run-off, during a serious rain, you'd want to docent the breaking of the bud, probably Sassafras, because it's so colorful, and I look at so many Sassafras blossoms, that I think I'm going insane. Who spends their time that way? Ten minutes can be a long time, and you have it to spare. So you try and notice everything: you can't, of course, you merely see some things.The big picture is beyond me, I merely note details; the big picture is an academic construct, it doesn't really exist. What we have are tadpoles, becoming frogs, not some metaphysical bullshit. Harvey said it best. "Seven tigers/ nothing unusual/ never mind."