Stuffed

Wow. Went to lunch with Shawn at Village Inn (don't laugh, we all have our 'I just like it" foodshop) and then went back there for dinner with Arn & Shawn after the baronial Activities night. Stuffed. I'm stuffed to the gills, I tell you. Chef salad for 'breakfast' and eggs, bacon, pancakes for dinner. Of course. Think about it - when do you get sleepy? After eggs, bacon, pancakes, and (did I mention?) hashbrowns. Right? So it's got to be a night-time meal.

Sure. Right.
Pass the maple syrup, please...

(Car is inspected, too late for base sticker though. Man, those base pass offices have hours an inner-city bank would envy!)

My day is full of trees

I sit at my computer alot, in a day. Starting in the morning when I can no longer stand Arni's alarm clock beeping (a 2 to 2 1/2 hour process of waking), I see the sun rise through the leaves of my willow tree... now my desktop for the computer is a picture of Anser Mensa (aka "Cip's Tree") in the dusk with all its lanterns glowing red against the black of the branches. Lovely view. Lovely view out my window. Nearly everyday I am newly amazed at the size and lushness of my willow. Such a beautiful tree! My neighbor, Bob, tells me that he has a deal with it - that if he gathers all the falling leaves ("tears", he calls them) from the gutter of the road and uses them for mulch in his garden, then the branches that touch the ground won't bother him as he mows our lawn each August. I can believe it.

When I was first given the tree, it was so spindly that we watched over it constantly, checking for wind damage and carefully watering it, adjusting and changing the five support poles as it grew. When Cindy was ailing, she liked to sit beneath the tree and lean oh-so-carefully against its young trunk. She lived long enough to enjoy the view of her world from behind a curtain of leaves and branches. Bob adopted an ailing dog and he, too, loved that tree and that resting place. His ashes are now there, scattered in the green of the grass where he had always rested. Baby bunnies slept there all this spring and feasted on the early grass warmed by the roots of the tree. Now they are off scampering all over our neighborhood, their old dining grass struggling to stay green in the constant shade of the tree's branches. Funny, isn't it, that it can only thrive in the cold months when the leaves are gone while all the grass outside the tree is brown and crisp. Another seasonal change that I've learned to cherish the sight of.

Trees are metaphors in life. Firmly connected to the earth, they stretch and strive for the heavens. I know you've read that before. But every day, sometimes three or four times in a day, I see and feel that truism heart-deep.

And the willow waves in acknowledgement.