Sunday Ramble

Often when I sit to write the words fail me. I've much to say stuck away in storage but those ideas have yet to ripen, mature, thus useless. So, I listen, and wait. It'll nudge me when ready.

It's best if I just sit and listen..and record the sounds....

Mockingbirds, the steady tick of the tide clock, the old emerald windchimes dance on the breeze.

(Ping, fodder.)

The old emerald wind chimes sing as if tuned by a great pianist, notes lost to my musical ignorance. The emerald windchimes came to me long ago from a different life.

The chimes were removed from a small cardboard box and placed on a hook from the roof line of an old Victorian home built high above a cold rocky creek which fed Hammersley Inlet. From that night forward they have gentled the pathway into my dreams. Their metallic wind forced dance came and went with seasonal regularity, always there throughout the last forty years of my life.

Lost within its strings and tubes and its emerald paddle are the shadows of death, divorce, hardships and hope. Also recorded are the whispers of joy and smiles. Horrible sadness lurks within its depths, too.

Often I've repaired the emerald windchime. It hates hard savage winds. After proper repair her songs return as newly minted, and continues to record my life.

The day will arrive when I fade into the shadows of time. Upon my drift into darkness I hope a thoughtful soul continues to repair her dropped tubes and reties the odd broken string. Then to nudge her paddle and play one last tune to my memory.

*****

It's time.  I need to slip on the boots and fire the mower and cut the grass and weeds, after I take a basket and clean the yard of pine cones and broken limbs and rake a bushel of oak leaves. The gutters also need attention. We have a bed of shrubs gone wild...should make for two hours of sweat. Bet I stir at least two wasp attacks.

I'll procrastinate until her return from church. If I'm lucky she'll ask to attend another Sunday movie which will give me all the excuse I'll need to avoid the awful chore. I've grown to hate yard work. Its tedious and returns little in value, other than a tidy lawn. If grass cuttings were gleaned as a food source I'd be far more willing to bust my butt. As it stands the waste is nothing more than compost material.

Speaking of which, it's high time I plant a bed of herbs. A few herbs love compost, other just plain old sand. My compost barrel, a contraption which requires I turn a handle and rotate the drum twice to three times weekly, works very well yet has stood silent and still for the last few years. It's paint has faded to dull green. Blame Obama. The result of a six day work week is a very sad forlorn garden.

Last week, since it's Spring, the love of my life stepped forth and cleaned a flower bed. She then discovered my stack of walkway bricks - a huge neatly organized pile of half-inch dark brown brick.  She took a wheel barrow and gave it a heavy load. Wheeled the ton of baked earth to the east side of our home and proceeded to border the bed with the brick. That evening she downed a bottle of Advil. Spring's a bitch.

But, every cloud has a silver lining. She'll forget the newly planted flower bed with its neatly arranged brown brick border. When she has fully forgotten, I'll step forward with my herbs. It'll make a fine garden.

Just you wait and see...

Stephen