RIPENINGS 

                                                                                                  [from unposted archives]

Here in the Japanese countryside there aren't any movie theaters or entertainment districts, like they have in the big cities. I don't know how we survive out here with just trees and flowers, rivers, lakes, wild animals, genuine weather and distant neighbors-- the most exciting event right now where I live is the plums ripening. Nothing like standing under the plum tree in the cool of the morning and having a couple of sweet ones for breakfast. 

We saved a lot of plums from the ravages of the scoundrelly simians in the historical Battle of the Big Plum Job a few days ago, our victory thanks to the advanced rock-propulsion system we've developed during the million years of struggle between sapience and simiance, a struggle still ongoing in politics and finance. 

Right after that engagement I picked a couple of basketfuls of ripening plums, just in case the furry marauders returned, but I couldn't reach the purplings high up, which are now hanging there ripening in the sun, like the finest rubies in perfectly complementary leaf greenness. Beautiful. 

Whoever designed plum trees sure knew what she was doing.

Crow Hates it When I Do Stuff

Out this afternoon in the clear cold mountain air, after a morning of uncertain rain that happy-ended with another of those perfect mountain-to-lake rainbows in full dayglow color that spoil us rotten out here-- another typical day in the mountains.

I was out in such a day with the big bamboo rake, intending to pull the tattered fragments of temporary firewood-cover plastic sheeting that had been blown off, stomped on, torn to tatters and tossed up into the plum tree by one of those the histrionic winds we get up here, that stormed through around dusk yesterday while I was in a big city office with no rainbow.

As soon as I opened the door to the deck I sensed that Crow had been waiting for me on his perch in the top of the big cedar out front, where he hangs out when he's got issues. Which is always. Sure enough, he was mumbling up there already, starting off on a grumbly string of tirades as soon as I came out and grabbed the big rake from where it was leaning against the deck rail, a procedure that clearly meant action on my part.

Crow hates action on my part. He's on my case whenever I start doing something outside, where he always lives and thinks he owns. When I began to walk down the steps from the deck, clearly with some intent or other - doesn't matter what - he started in, loud enough to make me think of earplugs, saying things like: "What the hell ya doin now, walker?" "Where ya goin down there?" "And what's with that rake, you gonna fix somethin?" "You think you own this place?" (jumping up and down on his branch) "You got no rights here, pal, I own all this!!" (I'm paraphrasing and editing here, for brevity and cultural clarity.)

The irony of Crow talking about rights was not lost on me. As I walked over onto the adjoining property (that really gets his darkness going), over which extended the plum tree branches that had caught most of the wind's plastic vandalism, Crow flapped all huffy over to the top of the utility pole right on the roadside there so he could be closer to whatever I was doing to his stuff, get a better look from an open platform, big beak yakkin the while. "Hey what are you doin over here, this ain't yer property either, it's mine! What the hell you up to now? You can't fool me, walker! I got my eye on you!" (Still paraphrasing; not that much nuance in Caw.)

As I reached up with the rake and began to pull down the nastily entangled ugly plastic fragments from the branches, i.e., actually doing something to achieve an objective, Crow hit the ceiling, so to speak. In an attempt to drown him out even just a bit, I started talking back (I often look like I'm talking to myself, but sometimes I'm not): "I only used this sheeting in a pinch, to cover the firewood; originally, I got it to make garden tunnels for early planting, but the monkeys made a mess of it (no real need to paraphrase here, this is pretty much word-for-word), so it's been sitting unused in the shed, and I--" "Hey, why am I explaining to you, Crow? You don't give a damn about plastic or monkeys!" "You don't own this property anyway! I own that property there, and I own this plum tree too; you don't, you're just full of caws!"

As I went on talking loudly, wrestling down the plastic and getting all the fragments into a bundle, something I said must've hit a nerve 'cause Crow took off in a big dark huff and flapped on down toward the Lake, I could hear him yelling for a long way; folks in the village were gonna get an earful.

It's a lot quieter up here now without a crow, and the plum tree looks a lot better without that plastic sheeting all up in it.

My plum tree.

On my property.

I do stuff here.

Arms waving,

wild dancing - no mistaking 

plum tree joy

MINUTES FILLED WITH DAYS

Kids can fill minutes with anything, like when Kaya came for the holidays and one of her big wants was to play in some leaves, as she always does in autumns at our house - which was still possible since there's been no snow - so I took her out into the garden to where all the late-fallen oak and cherry leaves had been gathered by the rake-assisted wind.

She gathered bunches of leaves in her arms, threw them high in the air and ran through them squealing, storing up days worth of wish-fulfillment in no time at all, then I suggested that since it was growing dark we should get busy on another big want of hers and use a bunch of these leaves to roast some potatoes, so we got lots of leaves together in a pile and Kaya lit them like a little priestess at an altar; then we got some oak twigs and threw them on, then more leaves and in very short order the heat was ready for potatoes, which in 20 minutes of additional leaf-cavorting were perfect for eating with some salt while sitting on warm rocks by the embers in the falling dark.

Then yesterday we went out to trim the plum tree (Kaya always has some house and garden tasks when she comes to stay) and I got the ladder and saws and pruning shears and of course the wheelbarrow-- Kaya loves the wheelbarrow, so she was in charge of that. The plan as we initially set it up was, as I trimmed the branches from the plum tree, Kaya would take them, clip them down to size and put them in the wheelbarrow; then when it was full, she would wheel the twigs over to the garden, where she would dump them onto the compost pile.

So there we were, I up on the ladder among the bare plum branches and Kaya standing next to the wheelbarrow with everything -- ready to go, but something wasn't quite right, some essential was missing... after a moment's thought, Kaya realized what it was, ran into the house and came back out a few seconds later carrying her toy mouse, which she placed just where it belonged in the wheelbarrow. Now everything was ready.

But with all plans, we must be prepared for change. As Kaya was doing her part, she suddenly had an even better idea than our original one: she began to use the ideally sized twigs to build a fine house in the wheelbarrow for her mouse to live in, using the larger twigs for the frame and the smaller ones for the roof, with some nice roundish green leaves for shingles against the rain and snow, and who was I to object from way up in a plum tree with such a godly perspective? Indeed, from my point of view the new architecture looked attractive and functional. By the time the structure was completed the plum tree had been trimmed, the mouse was snug in the newly named Wheelbarrow Mousehouse and it was time for tea.

Though the new plan took quite a bit more time to carry out than the old plan, we're always asking heaven for more time, aren't we-- and there it is right in front of us, all along.