Fledgling

Outside my back door, there is a fledgling starling resting at the bottom of a pot, the thick roots of a newly potted Althea spread above him. Babies and young seem to be my niche. His soft, warm, expired body was my greeting this morning the moment I stepped out from my front door. Literally, right in the middle of the walkway from my house to the sidewalk (just like the carpenter bee found on one of our morning walks; I guess insects are a niche too.). With me, in regards to the dead that come my way, the Universe is very rarely subtle. Smack dab in the middle of my path is the trend. When my husband called from work, I asked him if he'd seen the bird on his way to his car this morning because I was thinking that maybe he'd been blown out by high winds last night. No, he hadn't been there when the husband had left. His ill-fated first flight couldn't have been long before I walked out the front door.

All of the children were in attendance (including one stark naked 2-year-old) for the funerary rites. They sang with me and helped scoop compost into the pot. My son chose the marshmallow to plant in the pot.

Brazen Bunny

Let me tell you, this is one rabbit that had better be fucking magical because the only other option in a yard with four curious children and an equally curious German shepherd pup is to end up someone's indelicate plaything.

I first saw him (or her) yesterday when I was cutting the grass. (Don't worry, no noisome, fossil fuel guzzling lawnmowers here. The old push mower is equally deadly to small wildlife though.) He darted out from behind the mulberry Cunt Tree, along the fenceline, and into my very overgrown and weedy herb garden near the house. Immediately I had flashbacks to my teen years when I'd failed miserably to save any of the many baby bunnies my dogs had proffered as quickly expiring acts of devotion. They ended up instead contributing to the education of my budding naturalist self, usually being dissected and hauled out to The Swamp for the scavengers.

I thought that was the end of the story, but Cunt Tree Bunny resurfaced again today--when all four kids AND the dog were outside with me making their normal hellish racket. He sat there, as bold as day on the brick path, munching violet leaves. I crated the dog, made the kids back off, and snapped a picture. He was unconcerned as far as I could tell.

I don't think it's a coincidence that today is one of the days I woke with a foot in each of two worlds. Tonight I will sit beneath the Cunt Tree and let myself slide down the rabbit hole.

Summer Solstice

Wonder of wonders! Could the solstice already be here? The first hurrah as we slide slowly into darkness...

As always, our morning began with our soujourn to the geese, and look what we found:



A palm-sized tuft of fur (squirrel? rabbit?) and some honeycomb. And the longest day has just begun.

Dream

A Latino man in his 30's has come to teach me how to fish. We are in the basement of my house, but of course it is nothing like my real basement. There are toys strewn about, and the man's son is having a sleepover with my children. They've laid down sleeping bags on the concrete floor. I go upstairs for something, and the man's son follows me. "Do you have any of those little vibrators?" he asks. "Um, no. I don't think so" is my response.

The man calls me back to the basement. "You need to change the energy in this place. You need vibrators." I explain to him that I don't know what he is talking about. A bit frustrated with my lack of knowledge, he fetches a bamboo steamer and the tiniest fly agarics I've ever seen. One of them is brown rather than red. He attaches these mushrooms to the inside perimeter of the steamer with twist ties and puts on the lid.

This dream made me giggle when I woke up because all I could think of was Ms. Graveyard Dirt's Phallic Agaric".

Carpenter Bee

Rain or shine, we sojourn each morning to commune with the geese. On this particular morning a carpenter bee met us, splayed directly in the middle of the rain-soaked sidewalk. She's a little bedraggled after her ordeal, but I'm sure you'll all forgive her appearance.

Dream

Last night I dreamed that I was working in a bookstore, and a customer came in looking for a book called How to Find Mugwort. Subtle title, yes? There was a large, wooden circular display in front of my register where I went to look for the book, but all the copies of that title had been sold. Still available, however, was How to Harvest Mugwort. I tried to sell the customer on this, but I woke before he made his decision. The cover illustration on the mugwort book was a wood etching done in dark blue on cream-colored paper and showed a man with a broad-brimmed hat wielding a sickle. A tiny spider darted diagonally across the cover as I lifted the book to show the customer, a man of inderterminate features. I woke with Fiona Apple's "The First Taste" in my head, a song I had played during my Anthesteria celebration to provoke Dionysos (he didn't bite).

Today, with The Husband still home over the long weekend, I'm off to my favorite haunt to woo mugwort. Will she let me find her?

P.S.--Mugwort was one of the plants that came up in my Winter Solstice divination.

A Message

With the three older kids off to see a movie with The Husband today, I took my littlest for a quick stop at the library to pick up some books I'd put on hold. I received an e-mail that morning stating that my requested books were ready, but when I got to the front of the line the librarian told me that no books had been pulled for me yet. He told me that they were checked in, so I could go get them from the shelves myself if I would like to. Off I went.

No books. They weren't on the shelves. I checked the reshelving cart. No books. I grabbed some others in their stead to tide me over for the long weekend. (Memorial Day means that the library is closed on Monday. Sad face.) I walk back to the counter and pull out my driver's license, since I'd managed to leave my library card at home. The librarian does his thing, then, as I'm grabbing my books to shove off, he casually delivers a message.

"Just don't grind your flour too fine. It has explosive properties." Wink. Nudge.

What the...? I look down at my books, wondering if I've somehow inadvertently grabbed a book by mistake. No, my hands hold a guide to mushrooms and a medicinal plants field guide. What am I missing?