- Cape Rolling Out Bloomfield Road Art Trail (8/21/19)1
- Donors Pledge Almost Two Grand To Replace SEMO's Possibly Sentient ‘Gum Tree' (8/16/18)
- SEMO and The Will To (Become A Consultant) – Part 2 (6/14/18)
- SEMO and The Will To Do (You Really Want To See That Legal Notice?) – Part 1 (6/4/18)
- Judge, Jury... Trashman (6/1/18)
- Diary of Cape Girardeau Road Deconstruction (5/11/18)
- Trying To Save A Tree From City “Improvements” (4/30/18)2
A Briefly Simple Morning
Saturday felt like a winter's morning from my youth.
An overnight snowfall of about a half a foot blanketed the yard outside my dining room window. The world was silent except for the ticking of our dining room clock. No traffic. No snowplows. No children off in the distance shrieking in the snow. No nothing, just quiet, except for that ticking clock and the noise from the furnace powering to life.
It was nice.
From my leather club chair, I sipped my coffee and watched two-dozen birds crowd around their feeder, just yards from my window. I couldn't hear them, but I'm sure they were cheeping and chirping as the vied for the bits and pieces of black-oil sunflower seeds that I had had the foresight to fill the feeder with ahead of the storm.
It was a good thing too, since that feeder was apparently the only one within blocks based on the large number of birds. More than half of my guests were cardinals, being less territorial than they usually are. Perhaps they knew the thick blanket of white was going to linger a while and if they were going to survive this fresh blast of winter, they were going to have to share with both others of their species and other kinds of birds.
Our cat was oblivious to the zoo just yards away from the window. My wife had pointed the birds out to her, but since we really couldn't hear them, she seemed more interested in sprawling across the afghan spread over my lap than bird watching.
It felt good to sit and not do anything. Too often I tend to go -- go -- go, even though I live here in s-l-o-w p-a-c-e-d C-a-p-e G-i-r-a-r-d-e-a-u. I always seem to be doing something or going somewhere or have a dozen different irons in the fire that have to be done.
We haven't had a weekend snowstorm that I can remember in a long time, so there was no pressing reason for me to climb into my coveralls and start shoveling. I didn't have to get to the office. My wife didn't have to be anywhere. Our refrigerator and pantry were stocked. We were good. We could just sit, sip coffee and watch the birds.
But the still and simple morning did not last long.
Something startled our guests and they scattered, leaving the bird feeder bobbing from its shepherd's hook above the mess of seed fragments speckling the snow. A city dump truck rumbled by in front of our house, scraping a path through the river of white and waking our cat. She left my lap in search of Cat Chow. And my coffee cup was dry.
I stretched and rose from my chair. No sense in putting off the inevitable. Time to change into my coveralls. Time to quit reminiscing about times past.
I had a lot of shoveling to do.
And by the looks of it, I might have to refill that bird feeder.
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