This is the second-closest bus stop to my house. Don’t you think the owners/tenants must be lovely people? They provide not only a bench but a water fountain and fresh raspberries! There are more raspberry canes planted in the square of dirt around the bus stop sign.
The first-closest bus stop to my house features a mini Australian Shepherd whose human successfully trained him not to bark at the people waiting right outside his fence, so that’s pretty impressive too.
I hauled loppers up there with me, and a sweatshirt to kneel on because the shingle was already painfully hot. There were four or five big trees encroaching on the roof in various places. One bay tree, two maples, plus some hazelnut and walnut all threaded together with clematis vine. And a cedar that’s maybe getting ideas.
I snipped and lopped and heaped the branches on the roof until I’d made enough progress that maybe the roof won’t be such an ideal freeway interchange for rodents– my other objective. Then there was the problem of where to throw it all off the roof– in most places, it would get caught in other greenery long before hitting the ground. I pretty much pitched half of it down from above the back door, and half of it down from above the front entrance to the porch. (Later when Sanguinity went to cut it up, there was way too much for the yard debris bin, so a big pile is waiting for next week.)
I liked the diagonal view across my block from the roof– all the other roofs plus antennae and outbuildings and a jumble of fences, like a Miyazaki cityscape.
Of course, the sound I’d been worrying about is still there, exactly the same as before.
These are the three books I need to hurry up and read because they can’t be renewed at the library:
Unusual Chickens for the Exceptional Poultry Farmer
Smoke Gets In Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory
This Side of HomeFeel free to tell me which are must-not-miss!
I actually followed the serving suggestion off a Triscuit box. (We have mint growing out back.)
It was good despite not looking as styled as the photo. Then I finished off the bag of frozen peas by adding them to mac and cheese.
Asali Solomon’s Disgruntled is funny and sad and a coming-of-age novel, but I worry it will fall through the genre cracks because it follows its protagonist, Kenya, from age eight to twenty, and so isn’t sold as YA.
Naomi Shihab Nye’s The Turtle of Oman is slow in a wonderful way. You can get a sense of it from her hilarious-in-parts interview with Roger Sutton. My favorite part was a camping trip in the desert that felt, and feels, eternal.