Blue hour, Pink Sky

I wove while it snowed all afternoon. Thinking about cooking supper, there was 5 minutes of this. 

Heat

Late afternoon in our house, the shade pulled to keep sun out of the dining room.  A cigar box smells dusty, and is the perfect metaphor for my brain.  Got any-thing? No. No-thing.

The old farm apron is my favorite cotton print, even if I don't feel like cooking.  I like its pocket, with the round ric rac trim. Coleslaw for supper, with a Bloody Mary. Lost kittens found napping near their big project, Hole to China.  Both are alarmed when Carl sets up a ladder to scrape and paint the peeling siding from past winters' ice dams.

Still feeling bored at the grocery, I see my friend and neighbor, Elizabeth. She said it's a distressing holiday so far.

She's been taking care of her neighbor's animals while they're gone.We are living through an epic magnitude of raccoons this summer. I read Sterling North's Rascal when I was 11, and for many years  wanted nothing more than a tame raccoon for a pet, and a tame crow to live in a belfry of a church next door.  I've always loved wildlife, and still do.  But, I've discovered, there is a them and us, when it comes to numbers.  A few lady bugs are charming, a wall full or a window full is a terrible situation for all of us.

Raccoons entered the chicken house of Elizabeth's neighbors, two nights in a row.  The first night 3 chickens were killed and maimed, the next night the rooster disappeared.  It was a bloody mess, she said, and there was a one-legged chicken that had to be killed. She had already trapped and killed 7 raccoons in her own yard.  To tell you the truth, she said, it's kind of depressing.  Boring seemed a better kind of hot summer day, actually. I didn't mention to her that someone had recently seen a mother skunk and a litter of babies crossing the road to her barn.

Late Bus

Dusk happens suddenly these days. I walk up the hill after the late school bus comes through Avalanche. The woods is settling down, a few birds call, a cardinal chip-chip-chips. Two deer run across the road in front of me, their white tails flagging. There is a bow hunter in the woods.

My bench cushions are woven and shipped now.  Still some pillows to make and  sew together tomorrow.  But now, there are a few of my Hen-of-the-Woods mushrooms leftover, and some red wine, suppertime.