There are
still a few pears left hanging but are well out of my reach, and these will
most likely drop and get eaten by first finders, and that includes but is not
limited to squirrels, the dogs, hornets, deer, butterflies, and raccoons. The
horses would be there first but theirs is a life of fences and restrictions
from doing such things. Left to themselves, they would sit under the pear trees
and eat pears nonstop, until they exploded, or foundered, in no particular
order of that. So they get no freedom there, only treats.
These pear
trees have been very valuable to me over the years for many reasons; first and
mainly, we have planted them on each farm that we have lived on over the decades,
because their fruit is the core of the delicious relish that I make each summer
that was my grandmother, Miriam’s, recipe, but they have also been the enticer
to my young horses to leave the barn when I have first begun to ride them alone
and away from the herd. Once they learned of the sweet treats that hung, and lay
on the ground under the trees, they willingly marched away from the barn, boldly
going all the way to the other side of the house, out of sight of the herd. With
frothy mouths they would lower their heads and crunch with undistracted contentment on
the fallen orbs. Nothing matters when pears are in season, except for the
pears. But now, the season draws to a sad close and the mares, and all listed
creature above, will have to wait until next year’s pears, but at life's present speed, that won’t be
long.
As I went
about my day on Sunday, I meant to make a list of things I saw through the day
but never made the time to jot them down. A few that I do remember are, a
butterfly dancing with its own shadow, an orange Fritillary, by size looked to
be a male. It flitted and flirted with a shadow butterfly below it for many
minutes. The sun was above and to the back of the butterfly and its shadow was
in hard outline on the pool deck below it, and the dancing shadow was as equally
mesmerizing to this guy, as his flitting about was to me. It was charming to me
to see how focused this butterfly was on his reality of his moment, that he was
courting and dancing with a wonderful dancer who knew and mimicked his every
move. Just like Ginger and Fred, they were together in perfection.
Later, I saw a Red Shoulder hawk fly in a
rapid whoosh, up from the woods to the edge of the pond where the north wind
was rising as it was pushed over the dam. The rising winds lifted the hawk and
it quickly rose as it flew in lazy circles higher and higher. The sun shone
through its tail showing its handsome black and white bands in clear definition,
and once it had reached how high it wanted to be, off on a tangent it flew and
was gone from sight.
With the
weather’s change for the nicer, our weekend project was to reclaim some of the
overgrown trails around the farm. As we worked on clearing the trails back in
the woods near the creek, I was stunned to find that so many of our large Sweet
Gum trees have been girdled by the large, orange teeth of what must be, an army
of beavers. The sap from these poor victims is now oozing down their smooth,
bark less trunks, to the chips laying at the base of the trees. These trees
will all begin a slow death and will leave new holes in the canopy as they lose
their leaves, their limbs, and then fall. The beavers have rarely been this destructive
to the Sweet Gums and it makes me wonder, why now, and why these particular
trees?
Beavers have
never been very high on my list of animals to have around when you have trees
and water, both of which we have a lot of, but my tolerance of this new and
recent killing of our trees is wearing their welcome thin to say the least. In
reality, I know that is a fantasy to think that “removing a few” will
significantly lessen the pack of them. No, they only just call in more friends
and family up from the bowels of the creek. There will always be, beavers.
After our work
reclaiming the main trail down to the creek and cleaning up the camp site, we
sat in faded plastic chairs and splashed some rum over some ice. I had sadly
forgotten to pack the tonic but we did have limes. We looked down at the still
water of the creek which was now divided into long pools of clear as gin water.
I could see flat backed turtles rising and falling and an occasional ring
perhaps made by a Gar that I could not see.
Then one of
those mists of tiny bugs came floating down the creek, a grouping of hundreds
of tiny flying bugs that moved as one creature. Inside the cloud of these bugs,
individuals moved vertically, up and down, and they too danced like the butterfly
in the light of the sun. I suppose someone knows the answer to the why of their
behavior, but it was a beautiful thing to watch without being burdened by that
knowledge, and they simply became fairies in the gloaming of the afternoon.
They danced for several minutes, and then they, too, were gone.
Some things have
very clear end and beginning points, like taking the turn out of the driveway to
start a fun trip, the turning of the last page that says “The End” of a great
book, or disappearance of the last morsel of a really good cookie. These
moments are real and have hard edges.
The awareness
of the beginning and ending of a lot things, however, can be foggy and aren’t
really noticed, until later. A particular
date may well be marked on a calendar as the seasonal change but the real
change of a season is more elusive. It is hard to tell exactly when the last time
is that I will cut the yard, jump in the pool, sweat from the humidity and
heat, swat a bug, or pick up the absolute last pear. These moments happen like bubbles with an ebb
and flow, and life moves on until the cycle repeats itself again, next year.
My apologies for no photos this post. There was a glitch somewhere. Imagination helps
