“Why not come and chat with me,”

said the Grasshopper,

“instead of toiling and moiling in that way?”

-Aesop’s Fables

(read the rest of the story here)

Excitement:

Two foxes in my yard this morning. I was tipped off by the crows, who were screaming bloody murder. I mean, really very seriously screaming, to the point where I got out of bed and went outside (without my camera, alas) to see what all the fuss was about. And there they were.

If I had chickens, of course, I would be alarmed, but mostly I was in awe of how pretty and how orange they were. Bigger than I expected, too.

The cats were freaked out by the whole event- hey, the crows don’t care about the cats, is it because they’re used to them or because they’re not orange? Anyway, they are now all lined up, standing guard. Tails twitching, acting all bad, like they didn’t turn tail and slink into the house when the foxes came.

Daring them to come back:
“Hey, Mr. Fox, why don’t you come here and say that to my face? Huh?
Yeah, didn’t think so.”

There is a poignancy in all things clear,

In the stare of a deer,

in the ring of a hammer in the morning.

-Richard Wilbur
“Clearness”

The deer ate our sunflowers.

They were Mammoth Sunflowers; we grow them for the goldfinches. My poor husband had been tending them, staking them, tying them.

The deer ate just the tops and the leaves. Only the thick green stalks remain; five feet tall.

Maybe we can make little sunflower seed balls for the finches, mount them on the tops?

It’s hard for me to be angry with the deer, though.

Especially when they bring their darling fawns to visit, waiting patiently for me to take their pictures, before tossing their heads, flicking their tails, and bounding daintily off into the woods.

It is well to have some water in your neighborhood,

to give buoyancy to and float the earth.

-Henry David Thoreau