Long Lost

Our sign says "No Turnaround" but trucks can't read, and when backing up inch by inch to try to turn around, their tires fump down off the gravel and churn up a track of mud maybe three inches deep. In spring especially. Today while walking the trash can back up the incline I saw something odd in the latest tire track, stopped, recognized it.

I had splurged on a five-piece set of Henckels scissors around 2002, and by 2007 or 2009 had worn out its kitchen shears and flower shears and the other, and lost two including the pair I favored for harvesting herbs. Never again had a set that elegant. It's 10 years later and I notice handles?!?!? in the wave of mud.

Pull 'em out. The herb scissors. I'll be darned. The pivot is dark with rust and corroded, looks like a raisin, but the blades are still keen. Rinsed it, and scrubbed away some of the rust with baking soda. Gave it a little lubricant. Maybe I can replace the pivot.

I'm amazed. Just amazed. Durability.

God's Creatures

A conservative was here over Easter talking about Jesus Christ when a wolf spider woke from its winter's nap and went hunting in my carpet, and the guy's eyes widened and he asked when I was going to kill it. I said, "Wolf spiders are harmless. No reason to fear. They don't bite. I never kill wolf spiders; they eat cockroaches (occasionally, a roach comes up the drainpipe here) and other bugs. They're not interested in you." He kept an obsessive eye on it. I tried to put him at ease saying, "You haven't got anything it wants." He urged me to kill it. I said, "It's one of God's creatures," and that shut him up.

The month of May means other "Thingz" are coming alive in multiples as millipedes wiggle-waggle across the linoleum like they own the place. I deposit them outside, with mixed feelings, because they belong out there but might also become some songbird's meal. That's the chance you take. Outdoors, after yesterday's heavy rains, beneath the garage door and a packing of wet leaves were lots and lots of worms, a sort of urban worm center, all wiggling and alive. Worms are our friends, and alive is beautiful! To me they looked like art.

Oh, I Gotta. . .

. . .call all my friends to come over, put on their water-resistant gear and boots with major treads and come with me to tour the property's 8 waterfalls just after a good solid rain. These are waterfalls #5 (above) and #2. To photograph Waterfall 2 demands you balance on a nice wet incline. From there it's only 25 yards to Waterfall 5 but it's not like there's a walkway. Bushwhack and step in the stream if you can't jump it, and risk the quicksand--because wet silica sand can make quicksand, and don't say no, because once I got caught in it under the Highway F bridge. It won't swallow you up like in the movies, but if both feet are in it you'll have a devil of a time trying to 1) grasp that you are stuck in quicksand and treading it like you're making grapes into wine and 2) free yourself. Pray that nobody else is there to jeer. It might help to untie and remove your boots and and throw yourself full length onto a nearby gravel bar where you can sit and think about how to pull your boots out.

The watercourses for each of these falls originate on the Divine property and empty into LaBarque Creek. Only in a very dry spell are these watercourses intermittent.