Two busy weekends in a row and this week completely disrupted with a new computer install for me, my beloved old machine sent down the hall for my partner's use, and folders and files to zip and transfer, programs to reinstall, networks to figure out, and general mayhem. Goddess help the hardware-impaired!
Last Friday night our friend Math came over to unbox, set up, shuffle, connect and reconnect everything. How grateful I am -- that kind of thing is pretty much beyond both of us these days. We're a two-
fibro household (my partner was officially diagnosed a few weeks ago, but we've both known it for awhile). Oh, while we're at it, we're a two-arthritis household, too. So, lifting heavy boxes and parts and torquing bodies to connect miles of cables in dark spaces under desks ... well, as I said, it's just all pretty much beyond us.
For the first time, we're on a LAN, for all that's worth -- haven't got it figured out yet. Some day we'll be able to share files and won't have to do all this zipping and walking disks between machines. Just today the little update message came from the vendor/manufacturer, offering to share information that would have been
really helpful about, oh, four days ago.
I'm hopelessly behind on everything web in my life. There's still some glitch with our local email accounts because of the LAN (I think). It continues to be a season of learning to live with drastic change and disrupted lifestyles.
But enough kvetching. We've finally had sun and warmth enough so that the 13th and last poppy bloomed today, a week after the l2th had dropped its petals with grace. Not complaining about all the cool weather and rain, though. Our water table has almost returned to normal after an 18 inch deficit.
And while I'm counting my blessings... As I was going out at noon to glory in the poppy, revel in the Siberian Irises, and go dreamy about the blackberries in bloom, I heard the unmistakable sound of the garbage/recycling truck grinding its huge self down the hill. What a welcome surprise. It never came on Tuesday, so I had hauled all that stuff back into the garage yesterday. Now there's a sight: me on my scooter hauling trash cans and recycling bins. The only thing more outrageous I do on that scooter is ride it like I was a cowgirl and it my pony, around and around and around the brush pit, managing the occasional necessary fire like I was some wild thing living out on the range. (My scooter looks so much like the red pedal car I had in the late 50s that my inner child is almost always in the driver's seat!)
In any case, I hopped on the scooter and started hauling what I could get to the street in time to be picked up by the recycling man when, glory of glories, my next door neighbor -- who has never been what I'd call neighborly -- comes dancing across the street flapping her hands and saying something unintelligible that turns out to be "Here, let me help you with that." I was stunned, and grateful. I called her an angel three times. Angel! As in, "You're an angel." She probably liked that. She's an 80-something Irish lass of Catholic persuasion and strong ideas of what's right, most of which I don't fit, except in the beautiful yard department. Fortunately, that does go a long way toward making Goddess women acceptable neighbors to aging, conservative
Wisconsin-Florida snowbirds.
And then the next miracle -- the garbage-collecting guy says he can wait while we get the rest of it to the street! And then another miracle -- he walks down the drive, enters the garage, and hauls the last load out. Another angel, just like Math the computer geek wonder-man who helped us last Friday night.
Angels have been on my mind since last weekend, when I was treated to flocks of phlox growing up the hills in remote southwestern Wisconsin, and the early blooming and already
stately angelica. I was out that way to visit friends who were camping along the Mississippi at
Nelson Dewey State Park, a beautiful area on the bluffs overlooking the river. We didn't see the bald eagles nesting while we were there, but we did see a golden eagle and heard many songbirds in the woods.
And just before arriving I saw the most incredible thing I've ever seen: a huge bird, snow white against the spring green, being chased by smaller birds as it flew leisurely along a creek at the edge of field and forested hill. Huge, pure white, clearly a bird of prey. It was one of those tests of reality. Was I seeing what I was seeing? There are remote coves and hollows and hidden valleys in that part of the state that have a timeless quality to them. Perhaps I had wandered into a mythic landscape?
My storytelling mind was working in a peak state. If not an otherworld creature, what could it be? An owl? Pure white? Out hunting in daylight? 5:15pm? We watched it fly for a long time, turning around at our first opportunity to see more of it as it looped and ascended up off the fields, finally crossing the road to disappear in the hardwoods on the other side.
Magnificent. Unexpected. Unlike anything I'd ever encountered in a landscape.
I couldn't wait to get to the campsite. Two of my friends there are long-time naturalist pagans. One an urban shaman, the other a witch. One of them, certainly, could tell me what I had seen. And I had my answer shortly after arriving:
a snowy owl. They're pure white, they hunt during the day, they're huge, and they sometimes range as far south as Chicago when lemmings, their accustomed food source, are scarce.
S was certain of all this, because she had encountered just such an incredibly unexpected bird in Chicago one summer when she was out running. She'd been able to study it over several days and had done the research about the rare southern extension of its habitat.
So angelica, and angels: the snowy owl, my camping friends, my beloved, my sweet nephew who is with me in spirit, Math, my Irish-Catholic neighbor, the garbage man.
And Julie -- who just interrupted me with news of knock-out roses, red and pink, found and reserved for the soon-to-be rose garden in the front yard, in the circle where a blue spruce used to grow.
Oh angels. Oh blessings. Oh life.
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Angelica
