Darkness

   "Progress" is beginning to wear thin on my nerves.  Things are a little better today since we had a wee bit of rain overnight but for the past two months, I was constantly on edge.  My nerves were being tested at each turnaround.  A severe drought left our area literally crispy.  Leaves prematurely fell from the trees and became a thick, crackly carpet throughout the woods.  This was just waiting for someone to take a notion of starting a fire whether by ill intention, a tossed out cigarette, fireworks or campfire.  The city took the wise step of issuing a burn ban but, obviously, that does not apply to everyone.  This all goes back to the progress thing.  Clearcutting property has reached a frenzied stage as building new houses is all the rage.  Fine.  Fine and dandy.  BUT...you should follow the rules.  As the people clear the properties all around us, the trees are simply shoved in huge piles and lit afire.  Yep, lit afire while we are under a burn ban due to drought.  It is nerve racking to smell smoke knowing that any spark could set up a wildfire with the brisk north winds.  Progress!  Oh, how I would love to go back to being in solitude around here.

  As I sat on the pier yesterday morning, I had a brief moment where I felt that solitude.  The skies were eerily bright even though the sun had not even risen above the pines but the woods were pitch black.  I say woods...there are dozens of homes just beyond those trees.  For some odd reason, nary a light could be seen (power outage, maybe?).  No streetlights, no house lights...nothing.  As I sat there pondering the darkness, it occurred to me that maybe we are not meant to see everything.  Perhaps, we are better off being in our own little worlds.  I know I am.  Too bad, it appears that my little world is soon to be a thing of the past.

A Mom's Worry

   It is unseasonably cool here on the Bayou this week.  By cool, I mean the temperatures are to drop into the  50s tonight and only hit the mid 80s tomorrow.  This is the forecast for the next week so I am fully enjoying it.  There is a downside, however, as we are not to get any rain for the entirety of this cool spell.  This is bad as we are already in the midst of a drought and, with the north winds coming into play, "fire weather" warnings are being issued.  Burn bans are out for nearly the entire state.  This is not a good scenario if some idiotic person decides to play with matches.  (Yes, people like that are out there.)  Best thing to do is to clear the fallen leaves as best I can and keep the grass cut short.  

  This cool spell did not come without presenting problems to those in Florida, however.  This is what caused Hurricane Ian's shift to the east.  Now the good folks in Florida will catch the brunt of a major storm.  Those good folks include my son, daughter-in-law, grandkids and daughter-in-law's family.  It causes me great worry having them face this entity.  Like I told my son...I am accustomed to facing these threats but not accustomed to the worry about others facing them.  So...I worry....and pray.

  The stillness of the breaking dawn on the Bayou brought peace and tranquility.  The storm on the horizon for Florida brings angst.  If you or yours are anywhere near the path of Ian, stay safe...stay strong.  My heartfelt prayers are with each of you.  Hopefully, Ian will whip in and be gone before doing much damage. 

If Crape Myrtles Can Do It, So Can I!

   I find it rather uplifting to know that a simple  stroll through the gardens can be healing.  Yes, the fresh air and exercise go a long way in making the body well but just being outdoors in a peaceful spot can heal the mind and spirit.  Today was not good.  It was not bad but still not good.  I felt lousy from the get-go but still felt as if I had chores to be done.  I have never been one to just be idle.  Lounging about the place actually makes me feel worse so I struggled to find the energy to tackle a few tasks.  Not only was my body lagging, my brain was awhirl with worries about family members.  It seems that the old Morton Salt advertisement holds true.  " When it rains, it pours." I figured that  perhaps doing something would take the mind off of many things.  

  Along about midday, thunder started grumbling just north of us.  I turned to see huge black clouds bearing down on the Bayou and figured I had best get myself back indoors.  Just as I reached for the back screen door, a flash of pink caught my eye.  Well, storm or not, I had to stop for a photo!  The crape myrtles were blooming again!  Those crazy bushes had already bloomed once this summer but were now popping out with all sorts of buds!  The hot pink frilly clusters were waving like banners with the hefty storm breezes.  "Look at us!  Don't go inside!  Look at us!"  I did.  I braved the lightning just to see something that I have seen a thousand times over.  By the time I started taking the photograph, a slight drizzle started falling.  

  Seeing the renewed buds along side of the spent seed pods gave me an odd feeling of renewal.  Regardless of my current condition, there is new hope on the horizon.  Somewhere out there with those storm clouds is my "get up and go' and my peace of mind.  The crape myrtles told me so.  

Does She Know Something About The Weather?

  While it seems early for them to do so, the fiddler crabs are making their way up the hillside.  Normally, this departure from the mucky marsh takes place in August.  Then, the critters vacate their muddy tunnels and work their way up the hill.  They even go as far as the paved road which is some eight hundred feet or so from where they need to be.  The fiddler crabs do this mass, mini "migration" at odd times.

  The reasoning behind their move is still up in the air.  No one has been able to convince me of their true motive.  Some folks suggest that the crabs are searching for mates.  This is an odd idea as the entire mating and egg-laying process involves the damp marsh areas.  Other folks state that perhaps the crabs are in search of food.  Well, to answer that, fiddler crabs eat algae and bacteria from the marsh and also filter tiny particles of food from sand and mud.  They need the water to help with the filtering process.  Then there are the folks who say that the crabs migrate to higher ground when they sense that a storm is near.  Hurricanes flood the marshes and hence flood the crabs dens.  In an odd way, this makes more sense than the other claims.  If a fiddler crab can truly "feel" the change in barometric pressure, perhaps they can foretell when a storm is about to hit.  A few of the old-timers around here still cling to this belief and who am I to question them?  Common lore has it that the crabs will seek higher ground about two to three days before a storm is to brush through an area.  Once they leave their marshy home, they dig a new burrow in their newly selected site.  That same bit of lore states that the distance the crabs go inland correlates to the severity of a hurricane.  

  In viewing the weather forecast, I see that there are a couple of tropical storms that need watching.  For now, none are predicted to hit here.  The fiddler crabs, however, are on a hike.  Several have been found as far up the hillside as the board path and one adventurous little lady made it into the Small Gardens.  I sure hope she was a bit disoriented and is not adept at foreseeing the future!  I do not need a hurricane at the moment.

Oh, to be a Forest Elf!

  Have you ever had one of those nights where the brain just would not stop working?  Last night, mine was in overdrive and with all that active thinking going one inside my head, there was no chance of the body resting.  Had I been here by myself, I would have gotten up and worked on one of the million or so projects that seemed so simple at 2 am.  Today, those very same projects seemed far more difficult.  Whether the simplicity of last night was a figment of the overactive brain or whether the lack of sleep made doing anything much harder today is yet to be seen.  No sleep makes for a long, long day.  I say "if I was here by myself", because if I start major chores in the middle of the night, those poor,  "sleep-deprived" menfolk are liable to complain. (A bit of pure sarcasm there, folks, as men can sleep through a freight train thundering through the living room. The complaining might be a real thing, however.) So, I suffer in silence until I see the eastern horizon starting to get that faint glow.  Morning is on its way!  Yep, about 4:30 am, I was on the pier.  The billion things that were in a frenetic state in the brain during the night suddenly flew away on the gentle breeze.  Peace, at last.  

  A fine, sliver of a moon hung in the sky just above where the sun would soon be rising.  That moon was shining brightly even though it was tiny.  It made me realize that my insignificant self could actually be pretty important.  Life has a way of battering folks in the head and making them lose all reality of their self-worth.  Lately, with all of the hullabaloo happening in the world, I felt about as tiny as a forest elf.  Now as much as I would love to be a forest elf and live amongst the mosses and ferns, they are a wee folk and I have great things to do!  It is better that I try to be like that moon and "shine on"!  Oh, wait a cotton-pickin' minute!  The moon is in its waning stage.  Not good!  In a couple of days, I would just fade away. I would be nothing but darkness!  I would not be here! There wouldn't be much shining then. Hmmm...I wonder how hard it is to become a forest elf?  I could be an elf and still do great things, right?  Plus, it might be pretty fun!

  

A Good Sunrise Can Mend A Lot Of Things

  When the brain hurts from too much stress, it is my nature to cut myself off from the world for a bit.  I head to the pier before sunrise to contemplate what can be done to remedy the situation at hand.  More oft than not, just a bit of time in solitude pondering the sights around me is enough to mend my frazzled state.  I figure that some things just cannot be changed no matter how hard I try so accepting them is the next best thing.  Perhaps not accepting the worrisome part but accepting the fact that it does no good to fret over the inevitable.  We all have times that are not to our liking but, hey, life is not easy.  It is not supposed to be easy.  If it was, we would all sit back on our haunches and become nothing more than a bump on a log.  It is necessary to have things that kick our butts now and again purely to keep us on our toes and striving forward. 

  This morning, the sunrise did its job in rectifying a few of the hiccups that got in the way yesterday.  Listening to the birds awakening in the back woods, watching a redfish as it played the mullet along the shoreline and seeing the sun slip up over the pines on the opposite side of the Bayou was all the medicine I needed to face the day with renewed energy. After about twenty minutes of Bayou Magic, I headed back up the hillside.  There was work to be done and I had no time to be muddling around in despair.  Life is good.

Not Today...Not Today

  Life is fragile.  We can appear tough and ready to take on the world when one tiny slip changes the whole pace of things.  Here on the Bayou, life in general is rough and there are days that make me want to crawl back in bed and not face the challenges.  I do, however, because I have to even though, sometimes, I do not want to.  I get up, carry on and meet the challenges and rarely ever let the world know that it almost did me in.  It almost beat me.  Just not today.  

  It is like that with critters about the Bayou, as well.  Life is tough on them, too.   They face daily challenges just to survive...some do....many do not.  Earlier this morning, I was out doing yard work when I noticed a delicate damselfly sunning on a fig leaf.  It was so frail looking that I pondered how the bug ever survived with predators at every turn.  Then, the damselfly took flight and headed toward the Frog Pond.  She was going to lay her eggs near the water's edge so the life cycle could continue.  Well, there was another critter at the pond and things did not end well for our pretty, little damselfly.  She became breakfast for a skink.   The lizard, however, did well for itself and would live for another day.  

  Days are like that.   We are like that.  Some come, some go and others just wander through trying to survive.  Right now, I am wandering.  I am trying to make it through each day while handling everything that should really not be my problems.  Too many things have been dumped in my lap and I am going in circles trying to deal with them.  This, too, shall pass...at least, I hope.  

Wandering...just wandering

  As I hike the hillside in the early morn, a billion things are floating about the brain.  Here lately, things are a jumble of "not so good".  Don't get me wrong, nothing is devastating but there are "those" billion things that shift around just enough to be aggravating.  Stress is not a fun thing.  Someone once said "Not all those who wander are lost."  It is true.  Some of us merely wander aimlessly to collect thoughts along the way.  The voices riding beneath the trees sometimes can bring great solace.  Their bits of wisdom put things in perspective when life throws it askew.

  One of those voices came to me by way of a small bird.  A Carolina wren was perched in a dead mimosa tree.  It was singing the sweetest, "come hither" melody that ever was heard.  Music echoed through the trees. The bird was calling its brood that fledged a few days ago.  The little ones all gather back at the nest site at night but then at the crack of dawn they flit about searching for breakfast.  The bird singing was a comfort to my weary mind.  "Come hither and I shall protect you."

  Carolina wrens are tiny birds that are huge with personality.  While they are normally shy, once they know you, they are quick to trust you.  These birds will nest in sheds or porches without fear of humans.  My sweet friends nest in the greenhouse where I work every day.  Not once have they shown fear.  They use my presence to "protect" them and bring comfort.  This morning, the bird turned the tables and brought peace to my weary soul.

Counting Them All

  There are a lot of phrases that are spouted by those well-meaning folks who give ill-timed and not well thought out advice.  People spiel out some platitude that they think will cure all problems.  These things don't.  At times, they make things worse.  Things like "No one said life was fair." or "This too shall pass." are a few that come to mind.  While perhaps given in good faith that all will be well afterward. it is not often the case.  At this point, I fully admit to using a lot of platitudes myself but not often as advice to others.  Giving out advice is not my strong point. My use of these is more as a way to kick myself in gear.  And one of my favorite things to tell myself comes from Pop..."It will all come out in the wash."  I keep telling myself that and, well, it usually does.

  Today's platitude (which, for those who are not up on the word, is an overused moral statement) for myself is "Count your blessings."  Yep.  I guess we all should do this but rarely do we.  It is one of those things that we throw out there when things are starting to be a bit daunting.  It is supposed to make us feel better knowing that we have "things".  So, with the current struggles here on the Bayou, I found myself thinking that I should do just that.   To start with, I could rattle off the ones every person does when faced with the question of daily blessings.  House...check.  Clothing...check.  Food...check.   Family...check.  Yeah, this was getting a bit redundant. All of these are things to be thankful for but, at the same time, I needed something that made me feel better in the moment.  

  As I wandered about in my miniature hiking area due to the old dog's health, I pondered what my blessing for the moment was.  I have seen this area a thousand times or more in the past year alone,  It is hard to decide what is earth-shaking enough to be listed.  Then it occurred to me that earth-shaking is not necessary.  It just had to be something that was there only for me...at that time...at that place.  And it was. 

  At that very moment, the clouds separated and the sun peeked through.  I was graced with the view of a perfect sunrise over the Bayou.  A small opening in the tree row near the marsh allowed me to be witness to this phenomenon.  Had I been a few steps to either side, I would not have seen it.  Had I been deep in the woods near the creek bed, darkness would have still surrounded me. Had the old dog, Mr. PJ, not felt better this morning, we would have never made it this far down the hill.  This was my sunrise.  IT was my blessing for the day.

  Although we sometimes overlook things because we see them on a daily basis, they happen for a reason and they happen just for us. The timing, placement and thoughts all had to be perfectly aligned for me to see the sunrise in a new light.  (Yep, pun intended there.)  This lifted my spirits and gave me strength to face the day.