Loose Leaf Notes

In my bright turquoise crocs that someone left at Joe’s sister’s beach house and my dirty green gardening shorts, I walked with my weekend houseguest down our long gravel driveway singing “in your Easter bonnet with all the frills upon it,” stopping first to pull down a branch of an apple tree and sniffing the rose scented blossom.  We chatted with a neighbor who pulled up in an antique blue car with the top down and picked lilacs before heading back to the house and settling in on the porch where we watched a mother phoebe sit on a nest of eggs. A Van Morrison CD that I checked out at the library the day before was playing.  Fat bees were buzzing.  The mole trap was empty and the ants were eating poison.  We buried a bird that flew in the house and smashed into the window trying to get out, then played a few games of UNO (I won five out of seven all weekend) and wrote in our journals before picking up our watering cans to water yesterday’s seeds and seedlings.  To top this all off after we drove to town and I dropped her off with her foster care family, I bought some pink Patient Lucy flowers and a pint of Cherry Garcia ice cream at our family owned grocery store, then walked around town, which was all but deserted and aglow with the setting sun, taking pictures (100) and eating ice cream (2 servings) with my fingers.

Photo: New Mountain Mercantile window display in downtown Floyd.