The Never-ending Song

It was still stormy and very dark when I took Hannah out last night at 10pm, so I did not check on the tomato plant. This morning, though still very overcast and gloomy, it is not raining.  After putting Hannah back into the apartment, I wheeled over to the spot where I had planted the tomato.  There it stood-- brave as a sentinel, with that very small green tomato clinging to it's wispy stem.  It might develop and ripen, turning red, yet. After it's tenuous beginning, valiant struggle to survive, I might not want to eat it!  

The wonderful, generous gal who brought and planted flowers in my little patch last year, came again this Spring and set out many pretty, flowers -a rainbow of colors.  They are all looking very healthy and attracting lots of bees and a few butterflies. Among the fiber pots there was  one tall rather spindly plant, which for unknown reason, she left sitting on the porch. There was no little "signpost" set into the soil in the pot introducing the plant and explaining it's care.  It's leaves were sparse, and the lower three were a bit yellow.  The plant seemed too spindly to withstand the weather we have been enduring, so I have kept it on an end table beneath my "sunlight" lamp.  Although it has increased in height and has added a bit more green color to it's leaves, the stem is still very skinny.  A few days ago a group of wee yellow flowers appeared on a branch near the top.   So I decided, now that the days are warmer and there seems to be n...

Rained all night and still coming down steadily.   This is day ?  Some guy out here with a load of lumber looking for a chap named Noah. A resident  was reported to be spending time on line trying to locate someone who wanted to swap a small cabin cruiser  (boat) for his 10 year old SUV. We are up on a hillside with a good drainage system, so even though the parking lot fills up like a small shallow lake, it runs down the storm drains and  dries up rapidly. The lawn area; however, tends to hold the water.  My little patch of grass is full of puddles.  Poor Hannah.  Squatting to go pee is like peeing in a bath tub.  Her dense coat, despite clipping, has not been really dry for a week.  Even brushing her is impossible as the brush, one made of fine metal teeth, tends to yank out clumps   of damp fur rather than comb through it.  Hannah puts up with a lot, but after a while she looks at me with a stern expression...

It is too bad that rain cannot wash the world clean of the COVID virus, as we are getting far more rain than the rivers and plants can use.   Who knows?  Perhaps the continuous onslaught of water and wind will actually help to disperse the nasty little critters.  For all the research and effort being put into the study of this virus, they still know so little.  (Or at least that is what we are being told.)  It sure is a sneaky thing, changing course and approach every time a researcher thinks they may have trapped it. Every new change seems to carry with it an ever nastier weapon too.  Almost as if it is still being manipulated/controlled by some outside source.  It is depicted as a ball with little suction cup feet.  Perhaps there is some sort of electronic eye on the surface that no one has detected yet? Something akin to the eye of a fly which is actually many eyes in one?   So--here comes the heavy rain--supposed to have b...

One of the nice thing about Joseph's Dream, (yes there are some nice things despite all the frustrating issues), is the community's country atmosphere while being just minutes from downtown Bedford and a large shopping mall with Walmart, Lowe's, restaurants, Dollar General etc.   Here we are, five minutes from a major highway, up on a side hill, surrounded by trees, on a dead end cul de sac, our nearest neighbor a nursing home.  The birds, which we are not allowed to feed or provide birdbaths for, are singing in the bushes, a woodpecker hammers away on a dead tree up on the hill top.  Bees of many varieties are humming , butterflies flit about as they search for nectar-bearing blossoms. All short of course, since we are not allowed flowers over 10 inches tall. Generally it is a quiet, rather peaceful spot.  One of it's advertised delights being,- the country atmosphere. The ads do not speak of the wildlife (other than the birds we cannot encourage to spend ...

I have always been a cloud watcher.  My sister Patty and I used  to lie on the lawn on an old plaid blanket and stare into the sky, seeing ice cream cones, unicorns, fluffy white cats with huge  feathery tails, all the things of a child's fancy.  Years later my little grandson, Brenden and I would lie in the hammock beneath the big old maple trees and watch the clouds.  Brenden almost always saw animals.  He had a white Standard Poodle, Sam, who was his real-life pet.  Maybe that is why he saw "real" animals in those clouds rather than the fanciful things Patty & I saw as children.  Or perhaps that is simply the difference between male and female  interpretation? On the farm we watched the sky for those dark, ominous towering clouds full of rain and possibly lightening, which threatened to damage the new-mown hay drying in the August sunshine.  Lightening was a major concern on that farm as the house and barn sat atop a slight...

Once again time has gotten away from me.  May 1st was May Day.  I guess it means something different here in the U.S. than in Russia. When I was a young child, my Mother introduced my little sister and I to the idea of making a May basket.  There was a lady who lived in a small cottage up the road from us.  She was English-I think perhaps she had been a war bride from WW2 and her U.S. husband had died.  She had an elderly lady living with her,  whom she called Auntie, though she was not related to her.  I think the woman had no relatives of her own to care for her .  I don't know how she came to be with Mrs. Gray, our neighbor.  Mrs. Gray was totally giving her life to the care of the sometimes uncooperative and always mischievous old lady.   So Mother told us how nice it would be if Mrs. Gray found an unanticipated basket hanging on her door the morning of May 1st. There are no flowers growing in the gardens in New England ...

The past two weeks, since I have written a blog, have flown.  Of course it is a known fact that time goes much faster as one ages.  I remember sitting at my desk in high school during American History class, which I disliked so much, all those dates, battles, etc., staring at the huge clock on the wall whose big black hands never seemed to move.  This morning I turned the calendar to the next month--YOWSER-  I just turned it to April, didn't I?   The saddest thing for me is to try to envision what I accomplished in those quickly gone days.  I have been well, thank the powers that be, my guardian angels, whomever, so I have no good excuse for not writing blogs. I have been writing though, in every moment I find myself alone.  Alone doesn't happen much despite social distancing.  People still come to my door.  The difference being that they stand at the door instead of coming in.  They shout.   Many residents are hard of heari...