G7

The early dandelions have gone to seed.  When Dad was in his later years he usually went days without shaving, and getting up from a nap with his wispy white hair and scraggly white beard, Jay said he looked like a dandelion.  It was so apt, and it stuck with me, so that dandelions gone to seed always make me think of Dad.

The wispy dandelions share the fields with purple and white rocket, with yellow mustard, and with a pink flower we think is ragged robin. The springtime world is so busy here.  Everything grows so quickly, and the birds and animals have so much to do. A snapping turtle laid her eggs in the gravel alongside Gulf Road, near where our neighbor Brian is building a new barn. But I found it raided, dug out, shells empty and strewn about amid the strong smell of skunk.  Perhaps some mama skunk went home well fed to nurse her own young.

Life and death everywhere. We saw a fawn nursing in Lucia’s field across the way. The beavers are busy on the pond swimming back and forth to their lodge. A pair of great blue herons fly over regularly and disappear into the rushes. The geese are yacking it up morning and evening, and  walking the loop with Aviva this morning we saw a pair with a crowd of big goslings. The swallows are in and out of the nesting boxes all day. But the baby fox we’ve seen crossing Gulf near Schoolhouse Hill Road was lying still at the side of the road Wednesday morning, and another snapper we had watched crossing Gulf was flipped over on his back, hit by someone who doesn’t like snappers.  You could easily hit a fox kit, because they dart out suddenly, but you have to mean to hit a slow moving snapper.

The neighbors’ pond is so different from the frozen surface we met when we moved here.  Yesterday it was under a puffy layer of mist, just catching the light of the rising sun.  This morning it was smooth as a mirror, reflecting the house across the way and all the green surrounding it.  Later in the day, when the wind is down, it mirrors the sky. And when there is wind, it’s white with ripples.  Changing, changing, changing, with every shift of light and every breeze – so different from the solid plane we first saw from the windows.

I fill up with sights and sounds and smells. It leaves less room for the shame of the G7 meeting and the disasters of Pruitt and DeVos and Carson and all that ignorant, selfish, and evil crew. I still read the NYT and watch the Newshour like an addict, but I don’t give over a lot of brain cells to it.  We’re busy with local politics, where we can have a little impact.  For the rest, I just pray that the damage is not too deep or long lasting. The G7 disaster really shook my confidence about the future, but walking the loop on a beautiful morning with a hip that doesn’t ache and a sister to gab with restored it.