Cats at the window: A Haiku

Cats at the window,

Hopeful that a bird will come--

Spring feline ennui

Backyard Tanka

Chipmunk and rabbit, 

Two of our favorite wild friends,

Dining on the seeds

Spilled for that very purpose

By the considerate birds.

* * *

If I'm honest and step out of the faux Beatrix Potter/A.A. Milne/Kenneth Grahame role I've assumed here, I must admit that the rabbit wasn't actually eating, she was taking a bath. She was right under our living room window, almost under the bird feeder, and Elyse and I watched her for several minutes, talking about how she was cleaning herself just like the cats.

The chipmunk really was eating, though.

Shelter-in-Place Haiku

Roses peeking in--
Even flowers have noticed
We no longer leave.

Shelter-In-Place Tanka

Sheltering in place

With a ten-year-old baker--

Now the worst news comes, 

Not from CNN or Fox,

But from the dang bathroom scales.

Shelter-In-Place Tanka

Friday afternoon

Out for a neighborhood walk--

Anna is working,

Kids are "Digital Learning"--

But I now have some free time.

My Birthday and Easter

Today was both my birthday and Easter Sunday. This is, in fact, the third time when Easter has fallen on my birthday (or vice versa, depending on how you view it). (Also, for whatever it's worth, it won't happen again during my lifetime, unless I live until the year 2093, though Easter will be the day after my birthday a couple of times when I'm in my 60s.)

It was also a day when, because of the shelter-in-place orders still in effect and the coronavirus-quarantine recommendations, we couldn't go anywhere (or at least really needed to choose not to go anywhere), which made it (as Winnie-the-Pooh would put it) a bothering sort of day. But what really made it a Very Good Day was the beautiful Easter/birthday cake Elyse and Jessica and Anna made for me:

They used as their model this cake, which I wrote about a few weeks ago:

Later in the afternoon, Anna lay down on the sofa and was joined by the cats:

Shortly before we were planning on having supper, our electricity went out and the Georgia Power app showed an estimate of two hours before it would come back on:

(It's hard to tell from the picture, but they are coloring by the window light.)

As if that wasn't bad enough, only minutes before my birthday pizza was supposed to be delivered, the pizza place called to say their ovens were broken and they couldn't finish my pizza.

Like I said, a bothering sort of day.

(However, the electricity did come back on after only one hour instead of two, which was a nice surprise. I ended up having a plain old sandwich for supper.)

Two Reports from a Walk at Vines Gardens During the COVID-19 Crisis

Out for exercise

but the number of people

here at Vines make this

no less anxiety filled

than a visit to Walmart

No haiku, no tanka, just gnomes at Vines Gardens:

Nearly Everything That Was Wonderful About My Youth

This picture, from one of our family vacations to Florida around (I'm guessing) 1978, illustrates nearly everything that was wonderful about my youth:

First of all, we're in Florida, and among my most treasured memories are those of our annual family vacations. And, as you can see, Jeff and I are playing miniature golf--you probably can't read it, but the oval sign at the left edge of the frame says, "No. 9  - Woolly Mammoth - Par 2." Was there, for a young boy in the 1970s, any place cooler than a miniature golf course with statues of dinosaurs and prehistoric creatures and monsters of various kinds? (The answer is No, no place cooler--though admittedly quite a few places equally cool; many of them also happened to be in Florida.)

If you look closely, you can see that Jeff and I are wearing Star Trek and Star Wars shirts. Jeff's shirt has a picture of Chewbacca on it; mine features the star ship Enterprise. There was nothing more wonderful back then, nothing more wonder-filled and pure, than the love of an eight or ten or twelve year old boy for Star Trek and Star Wars. (Equally wonderful, though, I will admit, was the obsession we had back then for the collection of Micronauts and Shogun warriors that we were amassing at home...but that's another story.)

Most important, though, is the fact that somebody took this picture. Somebody cared enough to preserve this moment on film so that more than forty years after the fact I can appreciate it. Somebody loved us enough to have bought us Star Trek and Star Wars shirts, enough to take us to Florida, enough to pay our admission to the miniature golf place.

And that is the most wonderful thing of all.