I always suprises me when I stop and realize what kinds of things make me happy.
I really do like living at the foot of a cliff in the middle of the woods. I love having bird feeders and a hummingbird feeder right outside the window where we eat. I love the four chipmunks who play tag with each other across the patch on which we’re trying to grow grass. I think they live under the wooden steps. They use the drainpipe to hide from each other.
I love watching the universe of birds and critters share the wealth that we spread out there for them. That’s the answer isn’t it? If there were enough to go around for everyone, we wouldn’t have to fight for it. Enough food, enough places to make our nests. Water. Space. Peace..
The plump mourning doves and the skittery chimpmunks share the wealth of seeds that fall from the feeder, where the red-headed woodpecker and several as yet unidentified warblers assign themselves perches. When they leave, the nuthatch acrobatically addresses his food alongside what I think are little wrens. The timid cardinal awaits his turn on a perch, casually checking out what he might prefer that’s already on the ground. And through it all the two irridescent hummingbirds take turns dipping at the yellow plastic flowers on the red feeder. I know there are two because one has a skinnier backside.
I can sit all day and watch my flowers grow — the Kenilworth Ivy draping slowly over the rim of a tall clay pot — small pinkish flowers peeking out from the glorious pale green screen. The rows of lettuce — in leaves of reds and greens, lined up behind a stand of multi-yellow marigolds. Begonias and petunias and geraniums and flowering things I bought and lost the names of. But it doesn’t matter if I can name them, just like it doesn’t matter if I can name the birds.
They are all growing in the sun and in my line of sight. Sometimes I think I could be happy as a hermit — become some legendary lone woman who grows odd herbs and knows old secrets.
I have sent away for a compost bin. I just hope the bear who has been known to visit this place does not think it’s for him. Or her.
Oh well. I have to live a little dangerously. I can’t always count on the sun.