What the Day Brings

Yesterday was a warm day. Bow spent much of it outside.

I noticed in the morning that the white hyacinth in the front yard had opened its flowers for the first time this year.

The flowers in the morning

At least, I think it's a hyacinth, despite the fact that it does not have that canonical tower of flowers, all the same, and emanating form a single shaft. I suspect that my hyacinth is neglected, and that is why there is such a poor showing. But still, I thought it was beautiful!

I am not a gardener, and I don't make the flowers grow. I take no credit for this hyacinth's success, but it does cheer me up to see it bloom. In the afternoon, I checked on the forsythia bush, and I saw that insects were taking advantage of its blooms.

Some people do garden, and it is their life's work, and the success of their plants represents their own effort and their own success in life. I honor the true farmer and the true garden keeper, but that is not who I am.  My work is different. Watching the flowers bloom is entertainment for me, respite from my daily work.

 A friend asked me why I don't plant things right on the outskirts of the outer pen, so Bow could see me work in my garden. My work is Bow. I can turn my back on him for a moment, but not long enough to concentrate on a task. Indoors, I can get to him right away if he needs me and I am on the computer. But I cannot go back in the pen from the outside with ease. I would have to go back into the house and go all the way around. So that's one reason I don't garden. But it's not the main reason. It's just not what I do. It's not my contribution to life. It's not my gift.

My task is to prove that Bow can spell. My job is to explore the way language works to transmit information, even when speakers are not aware of it, to tease apart social skills from language skills, to show that while language changes in the particulars, over the long run it does not change as much as you would suppose, because the changes are circular.  My mission is to explain things that people do not see with ease, like the pernicious nature of the Neutrality Act and why it matters very much how we look at historical figures like Aaron Burr and Jean Laffite, and to allow others to see that women's suffrage existed in America long before 1920, and that the problems that we have today do not stem from giving women the vote, but from the fact that we allow people who are in debt to vote away the rights of the people who are owed money. My task is to get the Debt Collector produced.

This morning I had this exchange on Facebook with a complete stranger.

• Stranger: You notice how things have gone downhill since women got to vote?

  
  
• 

  Aya Katz Things have gone downhill since property ownership, not being in debt, and being worth fifty pounds stopped being required in order to vote. In 1776 single women in New Jersey had the vote, and it was good.
• 
  

  Stranger: You may be right there.

Does it matter? Will it stick? Maybe, maybe not, but I think it is worth trying. Will it matter thirty years from now? I've been thinking about that ever since I read this post by  a friend

http://photographytoday.sweetbeariesart.com/will-this-matter-thirty-years-from-now/

The issues I am striving to clarify will matter thirty years from now. But if I am not successful in making people listen, it's true that maybe my efforts will have been in vain.

Thirty years from now, the Neutrality Act, if not repealed, will still matter. The rights of creditors will still matter, whether they are upheld or denied. Language and how it works will still matter, and the cognition of chimpanzees will still be important. But will anybody care that yesterday the hyacinth bloomed in my garden?

The flowers had opened up quite a bit by yesterday evening

No. But it keeps me sane to be able to go outside and look at the flowers. To me they are not the main event, but just something that helps remind me that the show must go on regardless. They are like the unimportant gossip about what each day brings that keeps us interested in life, between major plot points.

By evening, when I looked at the hyacinth blossoms, they had opened up quite a bit and their pollen was spilling out.

Just before sunset, with the doves cooing in the trees above us, I knelt and examined each petal. Thirty years from now, none of this will matter. But sometimes we have to feed the soul so it can live to fight another day.

Snake Season Begins

With the weather warming up, it is snake season again.Yesterday on my walk I met a black rat snake. Snakes are much slower than rabbits, so this one stayed very still.

He was sunning himself out by the well house, and when I came in closer to look, he flicked his tongue in and out.

Here is a different view of the snake from the other side, so you can see the length of its body.

I left the snake unmolested, since he is guarding my well house from mice. But if for any reason he ventures into the back yard where the dogs are, he is unlikely to survive. Let's hope he is smart enough not to try that. Leo is already quite agitated by squirrel sightings.

This morning Bow and I went outside into the outer pen, and I brought along the watering can. But Bow refused to use it, so I had to water the seeds by myself.

In the interest of full disclosure, I think I should tell you that Bow knocked over the planter once yesterday, and all the dirt spilled out on the floor of the pen. I scolded him for it, and he has not done it again, but I have a lot of doubt as to the outcome  for those seeds. I picked up everything I could and put it back in the planter. This morning I saw that one of the pea seeds had moved up to the surface and was trying to germinate. I pushed it down a little, so it would have a dirt covering.

Bow seems to be against the idea of gardening. He knows all about it, for when he was much younger and not yet in the pens, we did have a flower garden up front. We all took turns watering the plants, and even children who came to visit enjoyed doing that. But not Bow.

It would be nice if Bow would cooperate just a little in earning his own keep or growing his own food. But he has to want to first.

Planting the Seeds

Bow can be very cooperative sometimes. Yesterday he was prepared to take a nap, and I thought he looked very cute, so I came and took his picture.

But the picture did not seem clear enough, so I moved in closer. "Don't move," I told Bow. "I'm taking your picture." He didn't move a muscle!

This cooperation is not something I can count on, though. It's only when he feels like being cooperative that he does as I ask.

This morning I decided to start a small experiment in gardening. I have been admiring my friend Julia's container gardening for several years now, but I do not have a green thumb, nor time to devote to gardening away from Bow. But what if Bow could help?

I apologize for the quality of these videos shot with my cell phone. I am not good at multitasking, and when I handed the camera to Bow to film what I was doing, it did not really turn out the way I wanted. So you will some unsightly footage of my finger and and some dark spots where Bow was holding the camera. But this is how it went.

Once he was done planting, Bow was really done. He handed me the watering can and asked to go back inside, where he took a long nap after all that work.

Bow handing me the watering can as if to say "We're done here."