Daft bugger

“Eat the suet, you daft bugger.”  So says my husband to the pileated woodpecker who’s banging away at our porch.  That daft bugger just kept on pecking.  It makes the whole house shake.

He looks a little daft.

We’re all bored.  We’re antsy.  Old interests surface.  Some are welcomed, some, not so much.

Last week my daughter Kate purchased a bunch of turnips for a stew I made.  I saved one out. It was organic.  It had a beautiful root system and harking back to biology classes in the past, I put toothpicks in four sides and immersed the root system in a glass of water.  I checked on it often.  The turnip bulb(the bulbous bit), being a source of energy for the plant, has shrunk over time.

My turnip now looks like a shrunken head with a long white beard.  I feel like I’m in an eighth grade science fair.  Every morning I speak to my turnip.  I cajole my turnip.  I tell my turnip “Don’t you want to grow greens. Don’t you want to have a luxuriant head of greens?”

So far, my turnip is secretive, mysterious.  The message from my turnip is “All will be revealed.”  Fuck that, I think.  It’s been two weeks.  I want a revelation.

We do not know when social distancing will end.  All will be revealed. We do not know the chronicity of a turnip.  This will be revealed in time.  I must say I am beginning to understand how powerless I am.

And here he is:  Thomas Turnip.

Daffa-down-dillies

I love Easter.  I love Spring.  I even love the sound of the word spring.  Bouncy, coming back, rebirth.  All good things.  Easter bunnies, the memory of my sweet girls in their Easter dresses.  Pastels, Easter eggs and chocolate bunnies, maltballs, jelly beans, gumdrops.  Ham and devilled eggs and cheesy potatoes and strawberry-mustard relish for the ham.  Asparagus, slim and cooked just so.  The dinner table with an old Easter basket in the middle heaped with goodies, a few jelly beans scattered on the cloth as if the bunny had dropped a few on his way through.

Today’s Easter will be different.  I will put a few flowers from my garden as a centerpiece.  I can make deviled eggs.  I can get out the old basket and fill it with some grass and put Gin-Gins in it.

We can rejoice!  I can rejoice!  We made it.  We’re still kicking, the birds have built their nests and are brooding.  The woodpecker is making a racket.  The apple tree is just about ready to burst.  I saw a bee a week ago doing reconnaissance.  The world rolls on.

Praise God or whoever, whatever, you praise.  The world is reborn.  It’s Spring.