HERD ABOUT IT? by ana grarian

There are two bees buzzing outside my window screen. (Not the fuzzy little cutie you see here. Doesn’t he look like a kitten crashed on a sofa after a long day of play?) I am not sure why, as there are no flowers or flowering trees in the vicinity. Perhaps they were drawn by the compost bin. Even my suet feeder is no longer in the tree. Some persistent squirrel must have managed to keep it spinning long enough to unscrew the body from the ring hangar. Earlier the Blue Jay was on the neighbors roof, cocking his head as if to say, where’s my breakfast?he air is quite pleasant right now. 63 degrees and not too humid – yet. The weatherman is promising 90 and has extended this heat wave for a couple of extra days since yesterday. Last weekend it was in the 60’s. Bright sunny days with a swift breeze. Great weather for getting things done. Not so much recently. 

The college students are, for the most part, gone home. We’ve had our annual celebratory parade, and everything is back to normal, it rained. Not the whole time, just enough to let us know the gods, goddesses, were still in the heavens (or all around us) and having their fun.
Everything is lush and green, fairly bursting out of the ground and swollen with a sense of self. Trees are heavy laden with lush foliage, that becomes a burden under high winds, which weed out the weaker branches. Tornados in some parts of the state left folks with trees to clear out of their yards. The locust trees are dripping with long clusters of sweet blossoms. They can be sickly sweet, but here the trees are so tall that we are treated to intermittent whiffs of perfume when the breeze blows. This town has a variety of locust with different colored flowers, and some trees without thorns.
I managed to find another garden box for free, and now I need even more dirt. It seems funny to have to buy dirt and manure instead of just going out into the field. I no longer have a pickup truck to haul it in and everything is carried in five gallon pails or by the garbage can. A hatchback car is a valuable asset.
The daily rumble and clank has started. There must be construction on campus as the deisel roar, grind and vroom started around 6 am and has not let up. They have to stop on a hill at the corner, and then turn onto a steeper hill, so everything groans with the strain. Now it is accompanied by the daily commuter parade.
I suppose I too should be headed to the closet and make myself presentable for commerce. Where would we be if we weren’t buying and selling – utopia?