THE LOST DOGS OF LANGSTON.

Entry 26.

Well here's the rainforest again. It was only a few weeks ago that it all still looked scrappy and scruffy and kinda po'ly. Like just a few green thangs was fixin' to grow in but it wasn't quite there yet.

Few weeks go by and it's a rainforest now. The chinaberry is blooming purple in the back yard and the privet is full of flower and hanging over the fence in front and there's another bush//shrub (kinda big and tall actually) with beautiful white faintly-scented flowers with yellow centers, that hangs over the back fence and also sits behind an old rusty plow in the middle of Paralee Jackson's driveway, just flaring out in graceful viney stalks all up behind it like a big fancy headdress or other outrageous costume piece. Of course it wasn't a driveway to her, it was probably a carriageway or maybe even something else, maybe it was just the path to the outhouse, I don't know. But whatever it was, now it's got clover growing up all in it because when I got here about three years ago I stopped the use of the Roundup because I think it's evil and kills things including people and I sorta wanted not to die and also to see what would grow in naturally.

I grew a jungle. Poke, muscadine vine, all kinds of lovely squash-looking weeds with big broad emerald-colored leaves that when they go to seed make a really nice aromatherapeutic smell, the dry seeds do. Ajuga, hostas, daffodil, iris and mimosa. Resurrection fern, Virginia creeper and poison sumac, which when it gets tall always looks sort of exotic to me. A few violets and ever so many tiny wildflowers, including the henbit which is my favorite. Crape myrtle and hackberry, Bradford pear, box elder, water oak, pecan, mulberry and fig. Eventually, a little bit of Queen Anne's lace, which I love. Lavender, rosemary, petunia, narcissus, impatiens. Both red and white clover, blackberry and mint. A few small evergreens. One small weeping cherry. A magnolia alongside Paralee Jackson's driveway, which stands out a little bit as it has its own very strong personality and is also on the east side of the yard in Green Dragon space in the feng shui, where it belongs. Lots of very tall dandelion-type things that would grow to fifteen feet or more. A big bunch of green leafy muppet-looking stalklike plants that my mama used to use for "salad" when she was playing at assembling wildflower dinner plates outside as a child. (Little did she know she would be making real dinner for people fairly soon in life including real salad.) Someone said Do you want me to have somebody come and cut those weeds for you out by your fence? And I'm like No, I like my weeds, I think they're also plants.

So there was probably some eye-rolling done at me "You're gonna have ticks and snakes" and I eye-rolled back "Yeah, I'm gonna have air to breathe and food to eat, too, and I'm not gonna get cancer from drinking Roundup".

But oculogyrics notwithstanding (don't you love that? I do), I did what I did and I got a weedy forest that I had my nice fella who cuts the grass (yes he was cutting the big lawn the while, in back, also some in the front of the house out by the front fence, I'm not totally crazy or stupid, matter of fact I'm not totally anything but actually I'm really a mixture of various things) go around with some of the weeds and young trees and so when you stepped out onto the big lawn in back it was kind of like wandering through a big aquarium at certain points, if you put your imagination on and let the landscape take over, which you don't need those fancy eye goggles to do unless you're in the Salvador Dali Museum and then you wear them so that you can see the exhibition; but you can do this yourself with just about any landscape if you've got a mind to try. And then of course I had also started the big octopus brush piles to work on which now probably rabbits and maybe henceforth snakes also live in but let's just hope they're rat snakes and black racers and garter snakes only, and let's let all the other snakes congregate as they are wont to do, down at the lake by which I do not exactly live, it's a little farther down from here.

And from what I understand about certain congregations, they do sometimes get a little bit cliquey. And whether or not that is a bad thing in the long run, I cannot judge yet or maybe not ever because Jesus says you're not supposed to judge and He's probably right.

So I was thinking about the bees and the flowers this morning because that's kind of an apt metaphor for relationships and we are always thinking about relationships because that's the stuff life is kind of made of. So I was thinking like this, men are bees and women are flowers for the most part even though I see now that there are some men flowers and some women bees too and everybody gets to "bee" a little different (haha) (did you know a haha is a type of small fence? It is, they have them in Great Britain, I'm told) (just run down the hill and jump over the haha and you will find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, Finian) (ignore the leprechaun as he haughtily glares at you with an almost indecent smirk on his face, leering at your impassable servitude to money and all things golden) because that's how Nature is, it's wild and wonderfully full of variation and never-ending interest and splendor because of its wild variety.

Why people don't "get" that, I don't know. I think I can step back here and brush my hands together and say tut, tut and be just a LEETLE self-righteous here because I have kind of always gotten it except for the points in life where I lost sight of it in a very personal way and believe me had I not lost sight of that I would have thriven much better, oh yes indeedy-doo I certainly would have.

Well so metaphors beeing what they are (haha again) I see that we need the man bees and the women bees and the women flowers and the man flowers because we've got to have ALL the bees and ALL the flowers in order for Nature to do Her thang and work so's we can have food and suchlike. To eat. And thrive. And then I remember I need to put fertilizer on the blueberries and I go see where it is in the cabinet and it's all stuffed up with canned food on account of the pandemic and it takes me a little bitty minute to find it but fortunately I have a little bitty minute and so I do. That will save for later as I have to also take the coffee grounds out to the blueberries and some people say that's bullshit but I don't care, I do it anyway, if it looks like dirt and it walks like dirt then it's probably dirt. Why waste good dirt in a landfill when you could use it on your land.

But back to the bees. You can't be having one bee married to one flower because that's not the way it works. I suppose you can have persons married to each other for whatever reason, but the whole system needs to be reworked and refined because we've got to take care of ALL the bees and ALL the flowers before the whole thing will work as well as it possibly can. I don't know exactly how to do this but you would think however many billionfs of people on a planet could figure it out. Billions of heads are better than one. One what? One head.

So now I'll confess lately I've taken to having the yard done up a bit more because snakes and ticks and so you can kinda see how things come full circle, everybody's got a little bit of the truth and if we all shared nicely then we might get the entire picture and get it all done and make everybody happy. We might then be able to have our racecars and STILL care for the bees and the flowers properly so we can also have squash casserole before we get in the racecars to drive. We might have solar panels and clean water everywhere and some nice air to breathe if we would just think a little bit more about the big picture and think ahead just a little bit about how the consequences are going to play out. I don't know the answers but I know two heads are better than one and if you have billions of heads, that OUGHT to be able to solve at least SOMETHING.

The yard also looks nice when it's just been cut and it's fun to walk on and roll the dog's ball over so he can go get it and bring it back to you and if you drop a piece of Boom Chicka Pop popcorn out of your little convenient light purple individual plastic bag, and don't ask me how environmentally correct that actually is because I either can't or won't tell you, well you can see better just where it went so it doesn't get wasted.

But it's really kind of miraculous to stand in the yard and see a rainforest before your eyes whereas just weeks before it wasn't there in its full glory and splendour. It's comforting and refurbishing to the soul and if you don't believe me just look outside. Especially when it's actually raining. Then you can pretend you're in a Hemingway novel or some sort of other wild jungle place and never even have to leave the house.

And sometimes when I'm out in the yard mucking out, and Tinky is trying to catch the bees with her usual vengeance and derring-do, I'll sing a little song to her and myself, and it goes like this: Please don't bother the bees...don't bother the bees if you please...the bees have a job, they don't like to hobnob, so don't bother, don't bother, don't bother, don't bother, don't bother, don't bother the bees!

And if the penny jar doesn't tip over and disturb the pencil cup, while Old Man Moon is looking at his naughty magazine in the twilight, then next time I'll tell you the story of how Widget the cat got out of the bag not once but two times in the same exact night. Oh but he won't get away a third time, I'll tell you that, 'cause I've got his little number, I surely do. I planted catnip just last week, and I've got that cat ALL figured out.