Across The Silent Night Sky

The weekend was a mellow, mild, and very welcome time to be at home and with my wife. We didn’t launch into any major projects, but did a lot of what I call “piddling around,” and enjoyed being outside in the warm weather. I’ve learned not to overestimate my stamina anymore, so I don’t plan day-long series of projects. I do one, take a break, assess how I feel, then move on to another one IF I still have gas in my tank.

We have had problems with squirrels getting into Mrs. Orr’s flowers in pots on the porches, so I cut circles from hardware fabric, cut a circle in the middle to fit around the plant base. These little things fit exactly into the pot on top of the dirt, and so far, I have seen no evidence that the bushy-tailed bandits have trifled with my wife’s plants. We also mounted an old metal headboard against one of our outbuildings and planted clematis vines to climb up the frame in between two miniature azaleas. We’ll see how it ends up looking.

A few years ago, I found an interesting looking flower up in the woods and picked it and brought it down to Mrs. Orr to put in a vase. I later learned that the plant is a trillium, and that they are rare in these parts…people are discouraged from picking them for this reason. I determined to never again pick one. Turns out there are at least a half dozen trilliums up there near where I picked that first one years ago.

I also saw a lone trillium growing at the entrance to a little cave/rock shelf where the raccoons and skunks and possums like to gambol. And there are lots of nice lilacs up there, and I picked some for my wife’s little Oriental-looking vase.

While we were out doing our rat-killin’ at the store, we got two more hummingbird feeders and a double shepherd’s crook. I rigged the crook together with a single one to make a triple feeder-hanger, and we were rewarded with some males who were very active, especially last night. One of the little fellers sat on the wire of the porch fence and nodded his head back and forth and watched the back door with great interest. I think he was watching us as we moved around in there. Blessings, those little critters are.

The dogs enjoyed a lot of sun on the porches. At one point, we walked over to our old grape arbor, which I severely pruned last fall, and sat on the stone bench. It was quite funny to watch the canine trio straining to see what we were doing. They were probably trying to eavesdrop as well. Silly hounds.

Saturday night we grilled smoked sausage and had homemade baked beans and macaroni and cheese. As long as the grill was fired up, I threw on some lamb chops that have been in the freezer for a while. I marinated them in a little wine, a little beer, sea salt, pepper, and olive oil. They were delicious (anti-lamb activist Mrs. Orr disagreed) and the dogs enjoyed some scraps, too. I also pickled another batch of eggs and and impatient to try this batch.

In addition to the return of the hummingbirds, we sighted our first blacksnake of the season. I was messing around over by the fence and almost walked right into his loving embrace. I jumped back about two feet with that atavistic reaction that lives in the bones of all of Eve’s distant get. The snake stretched out in the fence wire and sunned himself, and we called a truce. I just hope this year is not a repeat of last year’s Summer of the Snake.

We were grateful we got a gorgeous day for Saturday, because rain moved in yesterday and it got quite chilly. It was frigid all day today, in fact, and I was forced to turn the heat on. The wind has been pretty fierce, and now, nervous from experience, I was uneasy all day while watching the tall, tall trees sway in the gale.

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Two birthdays this weekend: Happy belated Birthday to Kristian…may your life be blessed, sir. And remembering my maternal grandmother, Nanny, whose 123rd birthday was Saturday.

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And two prayer requests. First, for a man with whom I used to attend church, Brian. He has endured Down’s Syndrome his entire, sweet life, and now has some complications including severe pneumonia. He is hospitalized, which I hate, and his prognosis is apparently quite dismal. Brian used to greet me with the sweetest smile an adult man could ever manage, and every single time I saw him, he would ask about my mother, who was then still alive.

My sister told me yesterday of a sad situation with an old high school friend, Penny. I knew Penny and her two siblings, but not as well as my sister did; she was close friends with Penny. We learned that Penny’s son, who was in his thirties, killed himself this past week. It is a difficult situation and a difficult time for the family.

If you are inclined to pray, please do so for Brian and his family, and for Penny and their entire family. Bless you for doing so.

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Last night, I hauled my aching legs (see how I always manage to draw attention to my woes and whine a little bit?) outside and stared up at the sky, which the wind had cleared of the clouds. I stared up for a long time at the cold, distant pinpricks of light. I thought about how we are spinning around in the bowl of stars, and how the stars, with us, are spinning, and we are all moving all the time towards a time and a place and a destiny of….I don’t know what.

For a distinct second, I felt that I could see my little farm from high above, and that we were sitting on the flat blade of an arrow’s tip, that all of us are breathing here together, my wife, my family and our animals and circumstances, hurtling together through the cold blackness towards the same target, through the star-crowded night sky, and feeling that there are many other arrows around us, speeding towards that same place. I shook myself and came back to myself and came inside and closed the door against the cold and the night and the lonesome feeling that hummed in me until I finally shut my eyes and left myself for a while.

~ S.K. Orr