What time is it?
Do we know each other? What the hell day is this, anyway?
Oh yeah, it's all coming back now.
I've been busy being a patient care technician for the lovely Mrs. Hill, who needed a few weeks to recuperate from a rather common, if complex, surgery. (She's just fine, thanks, so don't get all sappy.)
Well, that's the main reason for my extended absence. Introspection is an annual feature of the season (tortured Pisces that I am), and, at forty-four, I no longer attempt to resist life's natural rhythms. March is my time for critical self-examination and devil-may-care apathy, a purgatory of vexing questions and timid epiphanies dancing in the shadows of my peripheral vision. Since I'm already an introvert, this makes seclusion all too easy.
Spring settled over North Texas on warm, gusty winds and the happy din of chickadees, finches and rambunctious mockingbirds. I've been doing the usual Spring stuff, trimming decidious perennials, planting hanging baskets, preparing beds and avoiding everything else including current events, email, blogging and damn near everything involving a desk or a human being. Nature will be my sweet salvation until June unleashes a plague of triple-digit heat and insatiable grasshoppers conspiring to undo my work.
Chemicals in the landscape, house and, to a lesser extent, brain, are kept to a minimum around here - much of the place is wildscaped - but recently I knuckled under and applied a pre-emergent in hopes of limiting the vicious goat head stickers that plagued us last year, carefully avoiding patches where colorful indian paintbrushes will emerge en masse in the coming week. Regardless of how well or poorly the pre-emergent works, there is no getting around the fact that eliminating the stickers is a matter of hand digging the problem areas a few months from now. On two acres, it is war of attrition. Denton County is expected to be under a burn ban for the next several months; otherwise, I'd take the easy way out. My brush pile will make an impressive pyre when the burn ban is finally lifted.
Throughout Denton County, psychedelic pink blooms are blanketing the small but admirably rugged redbuds interspersed throughout the mostly naked forest of ancient post oaks, stout blackjack oaks, weepy winged elms and evergreen mountain cedar. An unusually warm winter caused the redbuds, like the crab apple and plum trees with their intricate soft pink and white bouquets, to flower earlier than usual, a point of some duress for the organizers of The Redbud Festival on April 8th. The likelihood of any redbud blooms persevering until then is remote.
Speaking of festivals, it is with some ambivalence that I won't be attending this year's Denton Jazz Fest. The ideaof a jazz festival is always superior to its actual execution here, what with the ratio of patrons to cops being roughly two to one and annoying new restrictions on coolers near the jazz stage. For people who live each day paralyzed in fear - which is to say at least half the goddamn country - SWAT teams, drug warriors and various other armed, uniformed assholes are the fundamental components of any family friendly event. (John Q. Family's primary objective isn't to actually enjoy anything, but to MAKE IT HOME ALIVE - preferably without having heard any cussing in public or catching a whiff of wafting marijuana.) Since jazz sets are largely optional after the first evening, organizers might consider reinvigorating the event by adopting "Cop Fest!" as the festival's new name. Still, it's three days of free shows in a nice park, small town comfortable and ridiculously easy to attend.
This year, though, with any luck, the last weekend in April will find me with like-minded comrades in a small Caribbean fishing village where human consciousness, sacred fungi and the mysterious night sky converge to create a diamond-studded portal to plodding satellites, distant worlds and the occasional intrepid UFO. The experience will fade with morning's deep slumber as terra firma is reborn of blue sky, azure sea and chattering villagers surveying the day's colorful catch. And life will begin anew, just as it does each day.
So that's where I've been and, hopefully, where I will be. Between those two points, it's anybody's guess.
Oh yeah, it's all coming back now.
I've been busy being a patient care technician for the lovely Mrs. Hill, who needed a few weeks to recuperate from a rather common, if complex, surgery. (She's just fine, thanks, so don't get all sappy.)
Well, that's the main reason for my extended absence. Introspection is an annual feature of the season (tortured Pisces that I am), and, at forty-four, I no longer attempt to resist life's natural rhythms. March is my time for critical self-examination and devil-may-care apathy, a purgatory of vexing questions and timid epiphanies dancing in the shadows of my peripheral vision. Since I'm already an introvert, this makes seclusion all too easy.
Spring settled over North Texas on warm, gusty winds and the happy din of chickadees, finches and rambunctious mockingbirds. I've been doing the usual Spring stuff, trimming decidious perennials, planting hanging baskets, preparing beds and avoiding everything else including current events, email, blogging and damn near everything involving a desk or a human being. Nature will be my sweet salvation until June unleashes a plague of triple-digit heat and insatiable grasshoppers conspiring to undo my work.
Chemicals in the landscape, house and, to a lesser extent, brain, are kept to a minimum around here - much of the place is wildscaped - but recently I knuckled under and applied a pre-emergent in hopes of limiting the vicious goat head stickers that plagued us last year, carefully avoiding patches where colorful indian paintbrushes will emerge en masse in the coming week. Regardless of how well or poorly the pre-emergent works, there is no getting around the fact that eliminating the stickers is a matter of hand digging the problem areas a few months from now. On two acres, it is war of attrition. Denton County is expected to be under a burn ban for the next several months; otherwise, I'd take the easy way out. My brush pile will make an impressive pyre when the burn ban is finally lifted.
Throughout Denton County, psychedelic pink blooms are blanketing the small but admirably rugged redbuds interspersed throughout the mostly naked forest of ancient post oaks, stout blackjack oaks, weepy winged elms and evergreen mountain cedar. An unusually warm winter caused the redbuds, like the crab apple and plum trees with their intricate soft pink and white bouquets, to flower earlier than usual, a point of some duress for the organizers of The Redbud Festival on April 8th. The likelihood of any redbud blooms persevering until then is remote.
Speaking of festivals, it is with some ambivalence that I won't be attending this year's Denton Jazz Fest. The ideaof a jazz festival is always superior to its actual execution here, what with the ratio of patrons to cops being roughly two to one and annoying new restrictions on coolers near the jazz stage. For people who live each day paralyzed in fear - which is to say at least half the goddamn country - SWAT teams, drug warriors and various other armed, uniformed assholes are the fundamental components of any family friendly event. (John Q. Family's primary objective isn't to actually enjoy anything, but to MAKE IT HOME ALIVE - preferably without having heard any cussing in public or catching a whiff of wafting marijuana.) Since jazz sets are largely optional after the first evening, organizers might consider reinvigorating the event by adopting "Cop Fest!" as the festival's new name. Still, it's three days of free shows in a nice park, small town comfortable and ridiculously easy to attend.
This year, though, with any luck, the last weekend in April will find me with like-minded comrades in a small Caribbean fishing village where human consciousness, sacred fungi and the mysterious night sky converge to create a diamond-studded portal to plodding satellites, distant worlds and the occasional intrepid UFO. The experience will fade with morning's deep slumber as terra firma is reborn of blue sky, azure sea and chattering villagers surveying the day's colorful catch. And life will begin anew, just as it does each day.
So that's where I've been and, hopefully, where I will be. Between those two points, it's anybody's guess.
posted by Arvin Hill at 3/13/2006 09:20:00 AM
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