Search This Blog

Sunday, July 25, 2021

The Thieving Raccoon

When I began gardening some forty years ago I never wore gloves. The only gloves I knew of were heavy cotton, fat and unwieldy, and I needed to be able to pinch and touch in my garden. So I used my bare hands. Fingers in the soil. My neighbour Joanne was a demon gardener and a nurse. She told me the soil was full of microorganisms, not all of them benign, and eventually she convinced me that skinny gardening gloves are the answer to everything.

 

A friend gave me the best pair of all: vinyl fingers and palms, with a fabric backing. Black and grey. Every day after gardening I would fold the two gloves together like a pair of socks and tuck them into my Lee Valley tool bag. They've served me for fifteen years.

 

Yesterday I left them out. I saw them on the shelf in the back yard and I was too lazy (though I prefer "lethargic") to gather them and put them away.

 

This morning I found one glove—one only—at the foot of the back steps. The other glove is gone. It wasn't a squirrel, in case that was your first thought. It was the big, fat, teenage raccoon that's been sniffing around lately. In the middle of the night he snuggles down into the bed of mauve flowers whose name I should know but don't, flattening the long stems beyond repairing. Yes, THAT raccoon.

 

I know it's my fault. I shouldn't have left the gloves out. He tried them both on and decided he only needed the right one, so I guess I'm looking for a right-handed raccoon. We spent fifteen minutes after breakfast trying to think like a raccoon, wandering the back yard looking for likely hiding spots. The glove is nowhere in the vicinity—not in the neighbours' yard, not in a watering can, not among Dino's empty wine bottles waiting to be picked up by the good Samaritan who returns them to the Beer Store, collects the deposit, and donates it all to the Food Bank. The glove is gone.

 

Later today I will email our near neighbours asking them to keep their eyes peeled for the Michael Jackson of raccoons brandishing his trophy on his right front paw. Surely someone will find it. If not, it's back to the Lee Valley catalog.

 

 
Copyright © 2021 Ann Tudor
Musings blog: http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com
Audible.Ca: go to https://www.audible.ca and search for Ann Tudor
Audible.Com: go to https://www.audible.com and search for Ann Tudor




 

Sunday, July 18, 2021

An Excess of Happiness

Can you even imagine that?

All I can scrape together

is an occasional moment of joy,

and bit by little bit

I try to expand those moments

into some sort of excess.

 

Oh, maybe that's the problem: the trying part.

I'll capture an excess of happiness

not by trying but by being.

 

This Eeyore business of mine

is just a habit, a holdover

from my early days.

A kind of barnacle on the soul.

How do you get rid of barnacles?

You scrape them off.

Or maybe there's a Universal Solvent

that will dissolve barnacles.

 

Bombard them with love?

Love, the Universal Solvent?

Sounds pretty far-fetched.

I need something practical:

a habit-breaking practice I can perform

for 42 days, say, after which  

Eeyore will be gone

and I'll embrace my excess of happiness.

 

 
Copyright © 2021 Ann Tudor
Musings blog: http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com
Audible.Ca: go to https://www.audible.ca and search for Ann Tudor
Audible.Com: go to https://www.audible.com and search for Ann Tudor
 



 

Sunday, July 11, 2021

More Slowly Still

Consciously or not,

slowing occurs.

Resistance, once so determined,

dwindles with the inexorable slowing

until finally you embrace

the snail's pace replacing

the vigorous stride

that brought such pride.

 

New words are called for to define you;

active and energetic no longer apply.

Call for Roget to put a positive spin

on what might be inertia,

lethargy, lack of involvement,

or simply laziness.

 

So what words do apply?

Calmness. Serenity. Attentiveness.

And waiting. Waiting.

The slowing does not reverse itself

but tiptoes its way to the ultimate stillness.

 

 

 
Copyright © 2021 Ann Tudor
Musings blog: http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com
Audible.Ca: go to https://www.audible.ca and search for Ann Tudor
Audible.Com: go to https://www.audible.com and search for Ann Tudor




 

Sunday, July 4, 2021

A Poet's Ways

A poet may pounce on the page

giving space to a world

that lives only because of her.

 

A poet may approach the page stealthily

on little cat feet

before instructing the pen in its duties for the day.

 

A poet may stutter onto the page,

stopping, restarting,

emitting silent and invisible

stammers of "er" and "um".

 

A poet may disown her page,

crumpling the words that came out wrong

and consigning them to the dustbin of her history.

 

A poet may, occasionally,

embrace what has appeared on the page

as if by magic,

her pen a pipeline from her heart.

 

 

Copyright © 2021 Ann Tudor
Musings blog: http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com
Audible.Ca: go to https://www.audible.ca and search for Ann Tudor
Audible.Com: go to https://www.audible.com and search for Ann Tudor