I am Baaack! Not really sure what the subject of the evening's discussion will be, but we will just wing it. Works for the Birds and the Bees don't it? Heh! Lets not go there, not at MY age. No, No!
Now, I am just in, washed up, and cooling down after doing a 'controlled burn' on the acre. Report was turned in to the Deputy on the desk at the County Sheriff's office just as I lit the first piece of old newsprint to start the conflagration in the back corner of the acre. The call was definitely necessary tonight, since, not more than 4 or 5 hours before I started mine, the neighbor had a nasty oil/gas/auto tire fire get out of hand just behind their house. Local Volunteers came roaring out with the little 1 ton emergency truck, head volunteer came whizzing out in his slick shiny bright red pickumup, and things were swiftly 'under control'. Not sure what about that. By the time I saw the problem the little red trucks were roaring in, along with a half dozen other pickumups with sturdy volunteers ready to 'git er did!' Well, they did and I didn't play nosey neighbor.
Thus the call for a 'controlled burn'.
Me, my trusty 100 water hose, the long handled yard rake, a little hand cultivator/claw/hook&pull type thingie, along with a pair of antiquated back issues of the local version of a newspaper, and an equally antiquated disposable lighter that still, after 20 something years, works quite well. (found it in the bottom of a ready to be discarded home made tool chest, along with $300 or so worth of hand carving and wood lathe working tools I thought I had sold at auction) [ Story on that one later.], went stumbling out to the corner trash pile vintage 5 - 6 years old (some of the wood and limbs have been piled here and there even longer) ...... whatever.
Tonight was the night I was to rid Five Oaks of the eyesore in my back yard. I just knew the old wood would burn well even thought I had not loaded the stack with leaves and pine needles, cones, and limbs.
Anyway, the fire started easily, it spread through the pile very well, and surprisingly the old Ash and Oak saplings that were cut and pushed over the fence into my acre some years ago, caught and begun burning first thing. "Now we gots it goin" I though as I shuffled and shifted the small stuff around the outer edges toward the heart of the blaze. "This should be fun tonight!"
I soon found my self caught up in the 'fun' of the moment, and begun running back and forth from the double row of young pines we planted some 18 or more years ago as a wind break along the east side of the acre, raking, picking up, and trotting the armful over to the fire. Things were burning right along, no wind what so ever, and no one screeching at me to "watch the other side, it's burning the grass" or "you need some over here quick!" The evening was pleasant, the two little Girlkitties were out and observing the proceedings, the one little cat, Miss Princess, again, was seated on her predecessors' stone grave cover, directing the proceedings, just as the original little Black Fluffball Granny Kitty, Princess Ebony did years back.
I still get a jolt to the heart rhythms sometimes when I look up and see that little cat perched there watching me. Deja Vu I'm thinking. Princess Ebony used to sit there when it was the site of the stepping stone storage pile. She'd be up there in the air about 10 flat stones in the air, and talking her little head off to anyone who would answer and talk with her.
Now, on to what I was going to tell you. (you should know by now I am very long winded when I get the urge to join my Muse and prattle on. So settle back, relax, open a cold one, and read on my Friend.
I dislike grass, especially that grass that is brazen enough to breed and reproduce in MY yard. And I double dislike it when I don't gots no lawn mower to cut it with. A neighbor waked up, while I was having fun talking to the kits, burning the 'burn pile' and generally sprucing up my back corner of the yard, and had asked me first thing "when are you going to get cutting on this yard. It's a disgrace to the neighborhood."
I looked at this old fuzzy headed, scanky looking dude, to see if there was any hint of humor on his leathery, weather worn old face. Not a hint. When I asked what he meant, he went into it with both hands flying. "The whole neighborhood is looking so good, all the yards are cut, the borders trimmed, the dead grass raked and removed, (more like thrown in the drainage ditch down the way, the one that has to be dredged every year or so to get the stuff and trash that people keep throwing in there out so we won't be flooded like we almost were this year) and you are not keeping with the program man. Have you no pride?"
We live 8 miles out in the damn country and this dip stick has a pair big enough to tell me that my yard makes the neighborhood look bad? What with the abandoned and falling-apart trailer homes just down the hill, the devastated quarter acre next door with the residue of the dismantling and burning of an old trailer home (the junk and residue is still piled there) and weeds, saplings, and wild hedge is growing in wild profusion.
And I am supposed to live like I am in the middle of the city, following ordnances and laws set up by prudish, well to do matrons and their 'do it or sleep in the other room' husbands, shelling out big bucks to have what little trash I do have of my own picked up once a week if the people doing the picking up think about our area, or feel up to doing anything for their bloated weekly checks. (if this last hurts some feelings here, live with it. I single out no individual. You all know what I'm talking about. Remember, this missive is of my writing, and the opinions are MINE, Mine, mine. Take em or leave em.
Well, after a few short words, that can NOT be repeated here since I write this Blog with the 'Child Safe' flag waving over the keyboard at all times, the old meddlesome Dofunny waddled back to his pickumup, cranked up, and burned rubber roaring off down the road to spew some more 'tales of the dangerous old man up the hill, the one that 'burns trash in his yard, and on Sunday, no less', and chases the preachers off when they come looking for donations.
Charity begins at home my friends, especially when you are one step shy of needing food stamps and welfare assistance to pay the damn bloated hospital, clinic, and over-priced med bills.
So, the evening that began quite pleasantly, with make do type work mixed in with a long time needed task of ridding the acre of it's share of Mother Nature's cast offs, sort of ended with a bad taste in my mouth. Thus I am spewing forth here, hopefully to get it off my chest and forgotten, and mayhap, to give someone a good chuckle. If I step on toes then damn well and good. I do that very well with out thinking a good many days of the week as it is.
I might mention here, the health of the Lady of the House, although not the worst in the world, is not all that good. She's getting along well, we are both, in fact, and she is giving me a mite of a headache what with the wanting to cut out this med and that med cause "it costs too much and I can do without it" even though the Dr. was firm in his admonitions to "take your meds or I'll visit you in the hospital, or worse". Must be that Sicilian blood flowing through those little veins that brings that on, ya think?
I am doing well, making my quarterly appointments on time, having the procedure quietly, and going on my way. I've picked up on the exercise, walking a good bit more lately, now that the weather is agreeable, and I'm thinking I can plan on another couple three decades of harassment, devilment, and mischief in the neighborhood.
Well, someone has to do it, yaknow.
I will now commence to begin to leave this one to the Blog browsers, and Family and Friends, and take to the hallway, or I should say 'the cat track' since the boys are having their crazy 15 minutes out there ..... they sound like a THoE (thundering herd of Elephants, for those who do NOT serve and wait table for Cats.)
I'm gone for my Earl Gray, some quality time with the Small One and her kitties, the 6 Mouskateers of Five Oaks Manor. See the latest updates of the Mouskateers escapades on Buddy Bear's Cats' World Blog. And check there for the soon to be added guest spot MikiCato will be hosting on another of the fine Cat Blogs that we have here on Blogspot.com. If I can remember, I will make a note of it here as well, in a post and also in a separate link in the side bar.
Everyone take care, be safe, be happy, and most of all, smile. Confuses the hell out of the enemy.
Y'all come. And bring/send your neighbours and friends.
Newbies/Characters are welcome too!
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