The dog kennel is de-pooped, for now. Those maple tree helicopter things are still hovering down. Chris has been valiantly blowing them off the deck where they are not wanted, then sweeping and carrying them off into the new spring compost bin. The mushy leaves which we use to cover the hosta jungle on the shady side of the yard have been raked up and also added into the compost oven. Hey, we’re not scholars from the Rodale Institute or anything, but compost really rocks. And so do rocks – the back yard has been totally Fred Flintstoned. A pond-with-3-tiered-waterfall project became Chris’ answer to losing a huge tree in the back of the yard; instead of removing the huge tree trunk he just added huge boulders and began the waterfall. It’s his baby which needs tending to occasionally; the pond portion has little leaks from time-to-time but generally we’ve been pretty happy with it. The birds, especially cardinals, seem to love to take little showers in the waterfall; they hang out there for hours sometimes. In early spring a couple of mallards stop and visit as though they’re looking at real estate – “honey, I know it’s just a one-bedroom but we wouldn’t have those damned Drakes next door causing all that racket.” (That’s me, anthropromorpholizing our duck visitors.) Then they see that we have two big dogs, and the sale goes south in a quick hurry.
We hardly travel for a variety of reasons; it’s expensive, we never have enough time, we’re not good planners, we’ve got two big dogs. So for us, our little plot of South Minneapolis is our retreat. Sure, there are the sounds of cars, trucks and motorcycles whooshing by down on the street, but we pretend it’s the sound of waves crashing on the Northern Pacific shoreline somewhere (ok, I do that, Chris isn’t quite there yet). There are the occasional shouts, firecrackers, those crotch rocket things that I don’t even like to call motorcycles, and sometimes dogs who have been left in their yards who won’t stop barking, but it all comes with the territory. We have plants that attract butterflies and even hummingbirds; squirrels, rabbits, raccoons and even possums like to hang out in our sanctuary.
We’re city folk at heart, I guess. Summertime, and the living is easy. So here’s a slooomooo moment. It’s one of those reminders to live in the present.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5VgMeyRyHk0ay1JS1hmMjdBZUsxeUdFQ3FnaldXOHl5cjZN/preview
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