Sunflower
Last year around this time a sunflower appeared radiantly on a side of the house not frequented, not thought of in terms of a sunflower. There was great expectation, but the batteries on the camera needed recharging, and the sunflower was forgotten. Next time I looked, the sunflower head had drooped like a willow, perhaps too long neglected. In a little while the flower was brown and gone. There was no lesson to learn but that perhaps sometimes precocity and hope must be nurtured more than solitude.
Things done lately:
stumbling on a cautious rabbit hopping away,
hearing the rustle of a bird in a treetop,
watching the ever-changing outline of clouds,
following visually the unpredictable course of a butterfly,
jumping back from a baby snake on a path,
feeling soft rain drizzling on bare arms,
rescuing a daddy-long-legs from the bathtub,
smiling at a lizard huff and puff its red-throated flap,
gazing at a rainbow in the dusk sky.
Bears
A teen bear has been crossing down the road lately, back and forth around dawn and dusk. Bears are always about, but not in the abundance of 2003, when entries here and photographs for the Features section were opportune. Surely they suffer from the habitat destruction since then, the increasing heat of summer, and the decline in native food sources. Now they make the rounds of trash containers, attracted especially by the smell of flesh, which, however, will not be in our container since we don’t eat it. Nevertheless, the bears will check, as part of their routine, knocking over containers, squashing down field fence, going about the bearish things they do.