I am sitting on the back porch. The day is overcast. It is the weekend, a Saturday, and Attila was mandated to work today, so he is at work. I can hear the birds singing. I’ve seen a cardinal couple this morning, they flew across the back neighbour’s yard and into the trees. The rabbits have been to visit. The squirrel has also been here this morning. Robins and grackles are looking for food in the browning grass.
What I am hearing mostly this morning though, is the awful sound of trees being ripped out of the ground. The development at the end of the street has circled the standing houses and is ripping out the beautiful mature trees behind us. The splitting of the trees as they are jerked out of the ground is a horrible, horrible sound. With each screech as a tree is destroyed, I send the pain I hear to people who are doing this to make money. Greed. They don’t need the money, they want the money, big house, big trips, big vehicles, big strutters. I send the pain their way, where it belongs.
It seems as if by the end of the day the cardinals will lose their paradise, and so will we.
This morning I am baking a loaf of whole wheat bread. We have several bags of whole wheat flour, and they are getting on in age. Whole wheat does not store well long term. The wheat I was using was unpleasant, but Attila insisted that I make bread with it and that he liked it and wanted to eat it. I found myself avoiding bread baking because it disgusted me to use the flour. I have talked him into abandoning that flour, what little is left of it. There is another bag of flour which has been stored properly, but for quite some time. Today I opened the bag, and so far, so good. It smelled fresh. Whole wheat flour, when it isn’t fresh, can smell awful. Today’s loaf is 100% whole wheat, it is in the bread machine, on the back porch, and it should be ready for a taste test by lunch time.
We had rain! Well, you might call it rain, but then again, you might say the sky was just a bit teary. There were wet spots visible on the top of the BBQ. There were not enough drops to wet the whole surface. Things are very, very dry. The grass is brown, rain barrels are empty, the garden needs to be watered twice a day. The day is overcast and my fingers are crossed that we get a few hours of showers.
Yesterday Attila picked some of our peas. There are four plants still standing, four out of the dozen or so planted. They are pod peas, meant to be eaten pod and all. A few leftover fresh mushrooms from the refrigerator, the fresh garden peas, a quarter pound of ground beef, frozen mixed vegetables and flavourings, into the Instant Pot and forty minutes later a fantastic soup for dinner. Attila is over the moon with this daily hot meal that he doesn’t have to cook!
Worldly Distractions
Weather
23°C
Date: 8:00 AM EDT Saturday 14 July 2018
Condition: Mostly Cloudy
Pressure: 101.7 kPa
Tendency: Rising
Temperature: 23.3°C
Dew point: 18.7°C
Humidity: 75%
Wind:WSW 8 km/h
Humidex: 30
Visibility: 24 km
Quote
“The chief weapon of sea pirates, however, was their capacity to astonish. Nobody else could believe, until it was too late, how heartless and greedy they were.”
Kurt Vonnegut
1922 – 2007
Is there anything better than a warm summer morning? I was on the step with my coffee at 8, reading “Zara’s Dead” and texting back and forth with several friends. It promised to be another hot day and I was content in the shade.
Then the clouds blew in from Saskatoon and after a half-hour drove me into the house. For now. A second cup of coffee, going to make some pancakes for Hungry Emil who’s just gotten out of bed, and then off to Margo to see if my uncle is at home.
Oh, and as I sat in my chair on the step, a black-capped night heron circled over and landed in a tree next to our “pond” (what we here call a slough, but is actually an overflowed dugout) and sat there long enough for me to get my binoculars and study it for a few minutes.
So sorry to hear about the development going on so close to you. Here there are many farmers who take down a lot of trees in order to get themselves a few more acres. It’s heartbreaking every single time I see it. They of all people should know better and should care.
-Kate
Your morning sounds just about perfect Kate! I drove across the prairies, well lets see, it would 40 years ago, and I loved it. Big sky, endless movement, beautiful. Had to look up black-capped night heron, not seen one. It doesn’t look the way I imagined it would.
Since it is a wetland, we didn’t think a development would go in there, but the greed in the town was too much, it got rezoned and the hammers are ringing now. Thank goodness we have trees on our own property here at Mist Cottage… the view though, well, I imagine I’ll be staring into the sky a lot in future.