Asakiyume mita

Today was wonderful!

It started out with meeting a young woman in a wheelchair, birdwatching by a small pond with cattails.

"I think I saw an American bittern," she said.

Later I brought some catalpa blossoms to a friend, and they gave me an iced, homemade-banana-syrup-and-oat-milk latte to take with me on my errands. It was a hot day and the drink was perfect!



My errands included buying a sickle to cut this long grass.



Not now: now I want to let it alone, as the fireflies and butterflies and bees enjoy it (and also I enjoy it). But later, in the fall, when the time comes to cut it. A lawn mower does a horrible, chewy job, and the shears I have are blunt.** So I want to try a sickle. I saw people cutting grass with sickles in Timor-Leste. Here is my sickle. I've named her Kusakari (grass cutter).



Now, as it happens, I also have a lump hammer, which the healing angel named Petra, and which is great for smashing open hickory nuts or acorns. Here she is, posing with some of last year's hickory nuts.



Well ... if we introduce.... Petra to Kusakari.... OMG!



Then on the way home from my errands, I was driving along a stretch of road that's marked "Turtle Crossing." Usually this is a depressing stretch of road because in spite of the sign, what I mainly see are crushed turtles -_-

But today I saw a live one, craning its neck, preparing to risk its life to get across the road. So I pulled over, went back, picked it up, and carried it across. When I set it down, it trundled on down to the water that was waiting for it.

ONE TURTLE LIFE SAVED. Yaaay!

And now I'm going to eat strawberries and whipped cream. PERFECT DAY.

**Yes, I could sharpen them. In fact I have sharpened them in the past and probably will in the future... but ... sickle!

ETA: The sickle's name should be KusaKARI, not KusaKIRI--corrected that now.

On my walk this morning I was thinking how on a walk some days ago, I'd found a robin eggshell. I looked down and found a cardinal eggshell. Further along on the walk I found a luna moth wing: it was a morning for sweet finds.



In the evening, as the sun was setting and streetlamps were lighting up, a cardinal came and perched on one. From newly hatched to adult in one day.

Later in the evening, when it was quite dark, I went to pick some cilantro, and the first firefly of the season was in the cilantro patch, lighting up the underside of the cilantro leaves--and he paid my hand a visit, too.

Earlier in the day, some kids were playing soccer on the common, and one of them was wearing a Brazilian flag as a cloak. I had only my cell phone to take a picture with, but:


Viva Brasil!

I guess we know who he's rooting for in the World Cup!

I am writing a little something with bridges in it, and almost every day I walk along a bridge, and as I walk, I think about bridge folktales--mainly bridge battles: the three billy goats and the troll, Robin Hood and Little John, Benke and Yoshitsune. Can you think of any more bridge battles in folktales or legend?


Benke meets Yoshitsune on Gojô Bridge, by Utagawa Kuniyoshi (Source)