It is interesting to watch the fox hunt. When squirrels are on the ground, she knows just what to do. And it usually ends up in a ground race to the nearest tree, sometimes with some quick double backs and she either gets what she’s after or she doesn’t. I don’t have the speed of either animal, but it is interesting to watch the fox when she encounters but doesn’t confront a squirrel who is up on a feeder. It dangles about three feet above the ground and with the weight of the squirrel it spins around. When the fox rushes up and all the other squirrels have gone the one on the feeder remains. It is now only a few feet from the ground, and it shouldn’t bode well for the squirrel. The fox could slowly walk up to the spot right below the feeder and wait. The squirrel might have ability to turn around one-hundred-and-eighty-degrees and return to the porch but more likely it would fall to the ground and the fox would be well positioned to dart to where it had fallen. But instead, the fox takes no interest of the squirrel on the feeder. She is only looking for things that are already on the ground.
It’s raining out there today, again. Supposed to rain a lot this week. I’m sitting here in an Irish wool sweater as its cold. Last night for a Mother’s Day dinner on my mom’s back porch, appropriate distanced, mind you, we were all chilly as the evening drew nigh. But by Friday we are supposed to finally have days that are up in the seventies. I’m trying to decide just how wet it will be if I go out there for a ride.
Reading “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Once again or the third book in a row I am back into the world is completely upended and people of African descent must trod so carefully amidst the capricious world of white ownership, where small infractions can and will cause whippings and “good” owners fall on hard times and have to sell people and break up families to make ends meet. It isn’t unlike reading about the Holocaust, when the world was simply upside down and there was simply no access to any sort of mortality we’d normally apply between human beings. Anti-Semitism has existed for millennium, but the particular nightmare of Holocaust spread and waned during a particular period of Nazi rule. Understanding the terrible normalcy of slavery in America is a century’s long ordeal. Though all the books I’ve read recently were published in the two decades before the Civil War and during a time when the northern states were free states, so not unlike reading about the Shoah, we know that an end, of sorts, is near. And surrendering oneself to either world is always a dreadful remembrance. Banal, evil characters, thoughtfully represented, always seem so disturbingly human and familiar.
Not that you asked, but my wife and I had a walk on Mother’s Day over to the nearby apple orchard. I pass it every other day on the bike, but she wanted to photograph it. One they way down there we had a field day of identifying as many as thirty-two new species with this app. There are Aspens on our property. Amazing. There are olive trees, (ok, invasive Asian olive-like trees, I later learned) down the rail trail. Here is the complete list so that anyone searching these odd terms like Deadnettle find their way to Dustybrine: Trembling Aspen, Eastern Redbud, Virginia Creeper , Smooth Sumac, Creeping Juniper, Mockernut, European Raspberry, Red Clover, Common Dandelion, Hedge Bedstraw, Tower Mustard, Autumn Olive, Wild Geranium, Norway Spruce, Tall Blue Lettuce, Western Redbud, Mexican Plum, Chickasaw Plum, Nannyberry, European Ash, Ground Ivy, Purple Crownvetch, Black Raspberry, Japanese Maple, Red Columbine, Japanese Snowball, Lesser Periwinkle, Asian, Bleeding-heart, Mile-a-minute Weed, Grey Catbird, American Robin, Red Junglefowl (a.k.a. to my eyes anyway, that last one is a fancy name for a chicken).
Monday, 05/11/20
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