This afternoon I took up my long handled pruning shears (actually theyre not mine, I borrowed them from the tool shed of the same Tommy Stevens whose grave lies under those four excellent persimmon trees I started harvesting in September) and went for a ramble, with some thought of improving trails through our woods and removing underbrush from beneath some of the trees. Here are four things that happened in the woods: 1) I found an iPhone lying mostly-buried in leaves at the base of a persimmon tree where I was cutting thorny stuff. Thats odd, I thought, how could that have possibly gotten there? Then I checked my own pockets. Ooops. My shirt pocket had been unbuttoned, and when I bent to pick up a persimmon... It would have been *so* easy to walk on without discovering it, and I doubt I would ever have found it once Id left that spot. Close call. 2) I discovered that since the hard freeze of a few days ago, a disappointingly large fraction of the persimmons that fall from the trees are *exploding* into a splash of orange goo when they hit the ground. 3) I found a patch of thorny vines about 20 feet in diameter and tangled in an impenetrable thicket perhaps 12 feet high. I have never seen a briar patch such as Brer Rabbit famously begged not to be thrown into... or have I now? Because this looked like one. You could hide an elephant or a Volkswagen van in there and it could neither escape nor be found. 4) One of our rescue doggies discovered the joy that is chasing rabbits. Marvin had a bunny explode from cover just a few feet in front of his nose. For a long instant he just *stared* after it in wonder, as if hed never seen such a wonderful thing to chase. And then he *vanished* leaving a little puff of steam with a Marvin-shaped hole in it where he used to be (just like in the Roadrunner cartoons).
Posted on: Fri, 15 Nov 2013 23:14:04 +0000
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