Neighborly

The other house on the Divine property has stood empty for as long as two and a half years while seeking a tenant who can appreciate its quaint and rustic winter drafts and hard water. It's not a cabin, more of a cottage. When I first got here it housed a couple with the prettiest three little girls. Then there was a couple with a young boy; they moved away to a subdivision because he needed friends and playmates. Then Shelley, the Harley rider who has moved back into the country area she came from. Now I've got a great neighbor who invited me over for New Year's Eve, and I've repaired some of her costume jewelry, and baked her some cookies, and she's taken me to lunch and given me cookies on a holiday plate, and I've encouraged her to take art classes and she did, and she politely grants permission for me to shoot off fireworks, and we talk about gardening and about boyfriends, and she is my exact same age...just the kind of neighbor everyone dreams of.

Jelly-Bellied Friends

I think spring rains water not only plants but snail seeds. Because when it rains, garden snails pop up full grown everywhere, walkin' around like they own the place. Up in the woods even at my Ozark foothills' highest elevations (about 880 feet) I still always have that moment of wonder when I see abandoned snail shells, whitened down bone-like, or sometimes polished down to a fragile brown translucency, with iridescence. "Shells? Up here?"

Picked up an attractive volunteer snail and put it on a dinner plate to pose for me. Actually I tricked it, saying George Clooney was looking for extras for his next movie. It handled this very well.

Neighbor Learns Me Some Manners Again

Phoned and asked neighbor Shelley, the forklift operator, to please look after my place while I was gone a few days. Why, she came right on down and said, "Don't you worry. I'll be watchin your house for you."

I was so grateful I nearly fell down. Because situation is such that there aint nobody else I could call on. That does happen in life.

Invited her in for a grand tour. The Divine cabin is quite a sight, esp with stuff flang all over, but that aint why I invited her. She just never been in before and I dint have the sense to invite her before I asked a favor. Ashamed of myself and God forgive me.

We got talking, as people do, about our crosses: grandpa dead, dad sick with prostate cancer, man trouble, legal trouble. That does happen in life. Both our eyes filled with tears and we held 'em back. Brave women!

Gonna buy Shelley a steak dinner, invite her over, and instead of darkness bring her some light somehow.

Ya Think He Kinda Likes Her?

Neighbor Shelley's suitor has been courting her for over a year. She pays him no mind. So Sammy gifts her with all sorts of artistic creative floral arrangements he builds and leaves at the gate of her driveway. Once he gave me a wonderful hanging plant that he had extra. Shelley lets the stuff rot right where Sammy left it. It's such downright odd behavior that I think Sammy might be her ex.

Sammy stops in front of my house if he sees me workin outside, and is polite, and asks me if I've seen Shelley, and where she might be these days.

This morning I saw a van come and go, and later I saw that Sammy had outdid hisself on this Halloween display. He brought in bales of straw, mums and pumpkins, the cornshocks and skull, the cobwebs he draped over the arrangement and the bushes. If I were her I'd at least give the man the time of day.