Birds

My wife tells me that a bird out back is making the prettiest tweeting but she isn't sure what kind it is. She imitates the sound while finishing dinner. At breakfast this morning I saw another unidentified bird swooping beautifully through a gap in the trees and then around to the side of our house. It looked like a medium-sized grey/white blur. We see this bird again during dinner and surmise it must be building a nest. After watering the garden I investigate, see its house and, briefly, the bird. While lying unsuccessfully in wait for an action wildlife picture I hear the squawk of our neighborhood parrots and take advantage of my camera to photograph this colorful pair. Back inside we discuss bird identification and, after Googling, decide tentatively that the tweeter and swooper are one and the same: a Bewick's Wren...Yesterday our local crow dived at a fellow walking past our house. I didn't mind as I'd never seen the guy before, he was scowling and had odd patches of bristly facial hair. The crow on the other hand is a neighborhood fixture, as are the parrots but only in fair weather.

sun and breeze

spring allergies all day until late afternoon i sneezed over and over again my left eye wept continuously and nose wouldn't stop running while lower back ached so much it was hard to lift my neck throbbed with pain meanwhile the pinwheels turned merrily in the sun and breeze

Party lights

I just fell asleep in front of the television. Warm night. Party lights strung over neighbor's yard. Purple bearded iris beginning to melt. Friday. Thank God.

Cafe Guci

Thursday night is getting high and amusing ourselves night.

WWOD?

Today at work I walked down the hall toward the young woman with whom, this past year, there has been the endearing camaraderie of arriving together at the same early hour. Two weeks ago she was RIF'd...a moment of silence...and then, as your eyes stare vacant-mindedly into the near distance, you finger your shotty and you wonder:

TGIM--Not

Actually, it's Tuesday. Memorial Day was yesterday. Until about 5 years ago TGIF was just another acronym I didn't understand. Not to mention in passing the eighteen year old living at home who recently escaped arrest. Too much shit...and then I think of :

Ahhhhhhhhh

Some History

I’m an elementary school teacher, a job I’ve only had for five years although I’m now in my early sixties. After 9/11 I began questioning what I could do that would be of greater service than the increasingly lame-ass gardening business I had started nearly 20 years earlier. That work had been all of a piece with a lifestyle that involved getting high, ducking taxes and avoiding planning for the future, getting storytelling gigs and trying to nurture an itinerant puppetry theater.

Getting started

Twilight after a rare warm and sunny day. Motown music meandering through the kitchen's open window. Out front I can look west down the street and still make out the Olympic Mountains.