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seen this morning
It's a drought here, and there's a water ban. Grass lawns are burned gold except where trees shade them---there they're still green. (I don't have much of a grass lawn: mine is a lot of thyme and clover and hawkweed and sorrel. Where I have grass, it's the same as everyone else's.)
I went for a walk this morning under a drifting gray sky and saw many good things. I didn't have a camera so you'll have to bear with words. I saw the red-winged blackbird royalty, the princes with their scarlet epaulets and gold fringe, and their wives, more drab but just as territory-proud. I saw elderflowers and, on the corner where I always see it at this time of year, tiny bindweed flowers. At the community garden I saw a flock of goldfinches, which my sister says is called a charm--a charm of goldfinches--perching on tomato stakes and then flying off in their rising-dipping flight, like needles through cloth.
Across the street is the highway department, where, at 7 am, they were having, apparently, a convocation of orange Asplundh bucket trucks, maybe/probably to cut tree branches from around utility wires around town. Highway department employees were in fluorescent green t-shirts and jackets, like firefighters. I saw one guy arriving, hurrying out of his car.
"Is it bucket truck day today?" I asked.
"You bet," he said.
Along the way, I saw chipmunks, which dashed off under the Virginia creeper and poison ivy. One was so tiny, the size of a mouse instead of a rat.
"How did you get so tiny?" I asked, and then began thinking about if you could grow small instead of big.
I went for a walk this morning under a drifting gray sky and saw many good things. I didn't have a camera so you'll have to bear with words. I saw the red-winged blackbird royalty, the princes with their scarlet epaulets and gold fringe, and their wives, more drab but just as territory-proud. I saw elderflowers and, on the corner where I always see it at this time of year, tiny bindweed flowers. At the community garden I saw a flock of goldfinches, which my sister says is called a charm--a charm of goldfinches--perching on tomato stakes and then flying off in their rising-dipping flight, like needles through cloth.
Across the street is the highway department, where, at 7 am, they were having, apparently, a convocation of orange Asplundh bucket trucks, maybe/probably to cut tree branches from around utility wires around town. Highway department employees were in fluorescent green t-shirts and jackets, like firefighters. I saw one guy arriving, hurrying out of his car.
"Is it bucket truck day today?" I asked.
"You bet," he said.
Along the way, I saw chipmunks, which dashed off under the Virginia creeper and poison ivy. One was so tiny, the size of a mouse instead of a rat.
"How did you get so tiny?" I asked, and then began thinking about if you could grow small instead of big.
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I love chipmunks. (Or chippies, as my great-grandmother called them; I never met her, but my mom has quoted her so much on this that I think of it every time I see one.) They're just so small and sleek and adorable.
I love all your word pictures. Almost like taking a walk myself!
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She was from upstate New York -- that branch of the family were farmers in the Ithaca area. (Some still are there, but no current farmers, as far as I'm aware.) I have no idea if it was a regionalism or just hers! We spent a week or three up there every summer when I was a kid, and I never heard the term from anyone else, but I also spent most of the time with family anyway, so I don't know that I would have. My mother's family is also pretty prone to wordplay and coining nicknames, though, admittedly, so who knows!
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