MEETINGS WITH MYSELF

Being frequently alone up here I have a lot of these meetings, especially lately, what with the weird weather and with pushing well into my seventies, when new questions come up at an accelerating pace, like where in hell did I put that fill in the blank. Plus it's been oddly cold for early April days; my life habit takes it tacitly to be November or so, with snow in the offing and winter ahead, wants me to eat warm calorific foods and snuggle out of reach of aimless winds and fitful rains. 

It's as though the atmosphere can't keep track of the calendar. Lately the weather seems to have gone to the dark side, but that’s just me looking out the window into the steely air, holding a meeting as the cherry blossoms try to remember what they're supposed to do at around this time every year and how. Happens to us all. 

It's confusing as well to the shiitake, who were completely suckered by that 10 minutes or so of sudden warmthiness that happened earlier in the month. Spring can be so cynical. At the feel of it, many of the newly emerged and naive shiitake came running into almost full mushroomhood completely naked, only to realize 10 minutes later that the sudden northerly wind was effing cold, what is this, and they right away wanted to go back to nubhood, but of course they couldn't, once you’re a mushroom, you're a mushroom. Talk to immigration.

The ancient mushroom code is extremely strict about this, so all the shivering newbies can do at that point is what we ourselves would do if we were full out in the frigid air on a log on a mountain somewhere completely naked, which is stop it right there, do not invest another iota of energy in growth, forget about it, just hunker down forever, because this is it! 

It's not pretty, but as I say the shroom laws are firm on this point-- buncha permanently hunkering mushrooms out there now, and speaking of firmness, those hunkerees acquire a wondrous texture that human teeth - which I and many of my acquaintances still happen to have - find most toothsome indeed.

Now back to my meeting.  

WISH I COULDA SEEN THE LOOK ON HIS FACE

Musta been a monkey did this, there was no wind yesterday and that high firewood stack was straight and well built, I checked and tweeked it a week ago when the winds were strong, a monkey - must have been a big monkey - jumped down hard from one of the big cedars onto to the top of the stack, which was mostly oak and heavy, some beech and cherry in there, and had likely the surprise of his life when under the impact of his weight the entire solid precipice toppled with him on top and descending fast, the whole load no doubt sounding off like a giant marimba, the pieces clacking and whacking, bonging against each other as the whole thing settled into the high mound of randomized wood that I spotted this morning while I was watering the garlic, radishes, arugula and lettuce, that end of the garden, so as soon as I was finished watering I started rebuilding the interwoven vertical support end of the stack, using the big chunks of oak lying about, but it was getting to be hot work in the near-noon sun so I decided to finish the rest later, after we got back from our trip to soak up some vast seas of cherry blossoms.

That monkey's face woulda been great to see too.