No… not Luka!
I finally sat still long enough to watch “Marley and Me”. What a sweet movie. Most of Marley’s antics felt very familiar, as I imagine they would to any owner of a Labrador.
I’d read the book years ago when it first came out and I think this is one instance where I enjoyed the movie more than the book.
Just don’t watch the end.
Luka was all smiles at the dog park this afternoon. Most every time we go, there’s a new pack of dogs to play with…
Today there were lots of smallish dogs, including at least half a dozen look-alike black pugs, one of which tried to take Luka’s nose off. This little yorkie (?) was a sweetheart though.
There were a couple really big dogs, which are my favorites, though I’d hate to have to feed them. Look at this monster with the sweetest of faces!
Luka took to this dobie today and followed her everywhere… mainly because he really wanted that rope toy she’s teasing him with.
Is there a dog park in your neighborhood? Can you mention it within earshot of your dog without having to take them for a visit?
*checks calendar*
The
New River Birding and Nature Festival is just around the corner!*rummages through pile of papers to find plane tickets*
*looks askance at very small suitcase*
*mentally juggles space requirements of clean clothes versus camera gear*
*wonders if farmhouse has a washing machine and linens and wireless*
*maid service, maybe?*
*briefly considers pre-writing blog posts but decides most everyone who reads this blog will be in W. Va. too*
*panics*
Please tell me someone of us, someone responsible, HAS IT ALL UNDER CONTROL AND TAKEN CARE OF.
😉
Cause me… my plans extend only about as far as getting myself there. I’m thinking of it as something like the first day of summer vacation. Remember how that felt? You’re ten or twelve maybe, and school’s out and the world is stretching itself out into one long basking day after another. Maybe your dad’s driving the family station wagon to the beach house with his one arm hanging out the window, drumming his fingers on the car door.
I see myself sitting in the backseat (as the youngest, I always got stuck in the back), sitting on one folded leg to get a little height so I can be the first one to see the ocean as we go over the bridge. We’re getting there, but I’m trying not to throw up from too much excitement and too much time in the backseat.
Only this time, the air won’t suddenly begin to smell like salt and it won’t be the ocean I’m aching to catch a glimpse of. Instead there’ll be mountains and it’ll be
Mary or Susan or Lynne (or one of the dozen-or-so others) that I’ll be trying to spot first.It’ll be the heart of the day and the sky will be huge and blue. There’ll be laughter. And birds singing, beckoning us into the woods. There’ll be plenty of time, time enough to squander on pure silliness and the joys of friendship.
That last part may be a mixture of fiction and dream and desire, but I’m anchoring myself there. It’s an idea I have inside me. The beach from my childhood that I keep walking on; the summer I keep longing for. That group of friends that belong only to summers past; the ones we built sandcastles and dreams and forts at the pool club with, the ones we watched pack up the family car and go back to real life until next summer.
A Spring Beauty shows off its nectar guides.
Outside a client’s house, the yard consisted of dirt, cement and a dog on a tie-out chain.
Friendly-looking for a pitbull, his tail was wagging and he smiled as I approached to pet him. Ever the cautious dog lover, I asked my client if he was friendly?
“Oh he’s friendly, but not like that.”
😉
That has me laughing, still, a week later.
Books say improbable things about Bloodroot like that it blooms in colonies and that its seeds are spread around the forest by ants.
If the ants were doing their job, Bloodroot would be easier to find. The woods would be carpeted with it, like they are with Spring Beauties and Squill, now.
As it is, I have to get my knees muddy searching for it. If the forest faeries are feeling a need for amusement, they’ll send a couple teenagers along the path to find me butt-up and nose-down in the shady leaf mold.
Pride and decorum be damned, there’s only so many spring days to find Bloodroot. I’m glad to have enjoyed it for another year.
Sunrise at Ocean Grove 4/12/09 
I feasted on some familiar delights today… daffs and crocus and forsythia, a beginner’s yoga class that left me feeling competent for a change (!), a longish walk with Luka past the neighborhood raspberry fields with their huge clump of purple hyacinths blooming right in the middle, the soft fur on Boomer’s cheek with his big ears drooping to meet my fingers, the local osprey pair rebuilding their cell tower nest after it was removed this past winter, newly arrived great egrets stalking the creek at low-tide… all brought a comfortable smile to my face.
How did you celebrate this day?
Spring days used to always smell like this. Of seaweed-tangled mussels at low tide. Of cat-tail smoke and creosoted piers. Of salt.
And beyond the ticky-tack of the boardwalk, I’d wander the dunes until sunset. Blanket in hand, I’d crawl across the sand to lie in the sun’s last rays where seagulls circled and circled overhead.
Returning to the faces that had worried away the afternoon, I’d offer up the day’s harvest of sea glass, fingers aching with grit and salt, forgiven for not being lost.
But I was lost. Wandering after whatever it was in the cool spring air that made the gulls call to me, joyfully following their shallow tracks in sand and sky. Something… there was so much I wanted then. I didn’t know what, only that when most alone, under the guise of beach walking, silence would tell me what I listened for.
I’m still wandering into spring afternoons after old scents and old sounds; as if one could open the past for me and let me find the girl that wanders there.
Today I thought about salt and how my life could be clean and simple if I reduce it all to salt; how I’ll be able to talk to someone without going from pure joy to silence. And touch someone without going from truth to concealment. Salt is the only thing that lasts here at the shore. It gets into everything, your hair, eyes, clothes.
I like to think of myself turned to salt and all that I love turned to salt. To think of walking down to the beach, stepping on the backs of a million dead clams and how gray can be so beautiful. How if you aren’t careful, you can just walk right into that alluring current and imagine what lies in a horizon you never knew was there, where the gray from the sky and the gray from the sea meet. Looking over the Atlantic at the edge of the continent, you can see all this crashing at your feet in cold rich foam, in salt, in gray.
