Herbivore

Two friends and I went out to the country where farmland still exists, beyond the desolate drywall of shopping malls and half acre parking lots.  We were on a jaunt to pick blueberries, and as we traveled the road, box stores turned to smaller franchises, turned to homes, turned to plots of land that held fields of corn and hay, with orchards of peach, apple, and cherry trees.  The driveway was graveled, and sometimes the sound of crunching stone under the tires of a car can mean adventure for a city person, who is usually more used to noiseless asphalt painted with yellow lines.  The pulverized stone announced arrival, no sneaking up on anything for us.  It was a sunny day.

The attending family member who was watching the store handed us buckets that would hold eight pounds of blueberries.  The attending farm dog plopped himself down at our feet, greeting us with a dog smile of infinite beneficence; his black fur stuck out in prickles for he had been wading belly deep in some farm pond.  He hypnotized us into patting his good, steady character with minimal fuss; after a bit of whatta good boy, he left for other duties as more customers pulled in.

The blueberry bushes were cloaked by blue netting just above head high and on the sides to keep out birds and other fruit-eating species.  It must work well, for the bushes still held ample berries even this late in the season, and buckets filled quickly.  Once you get the hang of holding the bucket under the selected branch, you can lightly whisk the ripe berries directly into the pail without tedious one at a time nonsense.  This was business, this meant pie.

I heard cicadas and blackbirds, I heard the wind wash through the rounded leaves of the bushes, the good growing things flushed the air with oxygen, the crickets rubbed happy legs together in cricket thought.  I felt a different sense of being home--standing on dirt, legs whipped by goosegrass and foxtail, hands sticky from berry juice and dust.  We finished and took the berries back to the stand for weighing; they were then transferred to open cardboard trays which allowed easy carrying.  I also purchased a few ears of corn, red Russian garlic, and a quart basket of tiny creamer potatoes for steaming.  Summer is for getting as many fruits and vegetables as you can, no holds barred.

While toting the produce to the car, the attending farm cat, also black, was enamored of a green thing climbing up the frame of the barn door.  This green critter seemed to be in no hurry to escape the nosy, intrusive animal, and had semi-turned its upper body to greet whatever onslaught was planned with derision and punishment.  It was a praying mantis with the attitude of a Brooklyn boxer, its forelegs held at the ready for a one-two knockout punch.  The cat was amused and would have had light lunch if I didn't intervene.  I scooped the pugilistic insect up onto my arm and was met with the triangular stare of the unblinking; I found a patch of grass out of cat range, and shook my arm gently to dislodge the rescue who wanted no such thing but to climb higher up.  It ended well after I put everything else down to realign Mars with Jupiter, and then trotted off to join the waiting party at the car.

It was a short temptation to kidnap the bug for my classroom, but a mantid has a more important job than scaring kids by eating other living bugs, one leg at a time.  That job is to make more mantids for keeping crops safe from aphids, even though that is not their solitary diet.  They will eat any animal that they can grab and hold, with aplomb and entitlement.  We did keep one, long ago,  that was fed crickets from the pet shop; she held the cricket upright, ate its head off, and then enjoyed the contents as held by the remaining exoskeleton, like a custard cone.  It was fascinating and bestial to observe, but, well, that's what they do, and do it well.

With our blueberry haul in the back of the car, we trundled back to suburbs then city, exchanging planned recipes for optimizing blueberry enchantment.  I ended up freezing two quart bags of berries with enough stored in the fridge for a week of eating out of hand.  Some things taste better if you have to actually go and get them by picking, pulling, digging, or plucking; besides, there is always the self-congratulatory harvest dance you do in your kitchen just before processing for storage.  By the end of the  washing and sorting, the dance becomes a soggy jiggle, and you are glad to flop down with a glass of tea and don't want to see another berry for days.  This predicament is also underscored if you are then too tired to homecook a meal and so order out, open a can, or head for a restaurant.  Sort of kills the hunting and gathering mythology if you then go out to a burger joint for a greasefest.   Well, so what?  There is room for fast food in my realm, especially if my feet are barking dixie.

But there is satisfaction in putting food up for later days.  Midwinter is livened up by not only the berries, for you can simply buy a bag of frozen ones anytime of year, but by the memory of the sun and multiple dots of blue that rolled ripely down into your bucket, of welcoming dogs and imperial cats, of the wave of corn silk and the attitude of six-legged royalty, who was ready to pop you in the snoot with a right hook.  I have wild leeks from late spring, sour cherries from mid-July, and will have made jarred applesauce in another week.  I can sleep, for I have summer held till a chilly winter day says Now.

It is almost midnight, darker than two hours ago for the sun is six hours away from rising.  That means it's 1 o'clock in the afternoon in Japan, tomorrow, where people are also walking paths, their footsteps taking them away from cities to farm stands, inhabited by Japanese farm dogs and cats.  Bless us all, life grows on a tree, delicious, sweet, and fleeting.  Sleep well, dream of pie pans.

River Town

The day is warm and blue skyed, with a fair breeze to push sails and skirts a-billow.  Masts glide by people walking on the warm brick of Central Wharf as the summer textiles of rig and outerwear show off, caught by the mild wind that brings lake air in and up the harbor.  Rippling fabric snaps against lines and legs, pushing forward, lifting weight up and away from gravity, moving through the landscape to the quay and into whatever you are to become, to home.  The humans lean abaft to keep balance, supported by the hand of the wind at their backs; the ketch presses bowsprit forward through the level waters of the small feeder river, current or tide next to nil.

News has come that the Buffalo River is to be dredged and restored to a viable ecosystem after a hundred years of industrial contamination.  Fed by the tributaries of Cayuga, Cazenovia, and Buffalo Creeks, the Buffalo River generally flows downstream in a fluvial process, towards Lake Erie.  However, because Lake Erie is the shallowest of the Great Lakes with an average depth of 62 feet, there is a bathtub effect when the winds kick up, thus pushing the water to the eastern end.   Called a seiche, the rising lake water pushes upstream into the Buffalo River, adding sediment throughout the snaky bends of the system.

Already there has been recovery upon the embankments: the city has reconstructed the terminus of the Erie Canal and further up on Ohio Street, there is now a small park area made for community gatherings.  Bikepaths and walkways have been installed along Lake Erie and will one day connect through downtown, Blackrock, and the Tonawandas bringing movement and interest to the green areas and most importantly, to the resource that has been at our feet all of our lives, the water.  Plans have been made for markets, lodging, and a visitor center located at the Canal terminus, and it looks like it will proceed, gratefully;  people have waited a long time for water-based amenities to return to the Queen City of the Lakes.

Staying at my grandparent's on the lower West Side was a treat when I was little. Originally, my family lived with them; after we moved to far away countryside, returning overnight to the city let me listen again to the familiar sounds of traffic, of rag and bottle men yelling for commerce, of steam whistles on popcorn carts, of creaking, rusted trucks banging down brick streets, and if the morning was still and thick, the solemn, abyssal voice of a two-tone foghorn warning ships of breakwalls and shoals which raked shivers, comfortable shivers through me.  A caveat for mariners, the sound carried through damp air, knowing things I hadn't dreamed of, calling, calling.  I was a nutty kid about sounds as it was, and this just prickled my spine even though it was something I hoped to hear, before the common clatterings of day began.  Could we install a two tone Diaphone, to be sounded on Sundays?  Buffalo was the first city on the Great Lakes to have one, is this not historical enough to merit attention?  I would love a shiver again.

Writing this post has taken several days, and ends after three fast thunderstorms spun through the above, with a rainbow at the closing curtain.  Rain came in sheets, flooding streets and drains, puddling for birds and animals, rinsing both heavy air and spiderwebs from window screens.  The streamers of color arced against deeper, dark greys of still roiling weather, illuminated by sun, vaulting from the city to the south.  A happy ending.

The cats hid most of the day, coming out only after each of the storms subsided for food and reassurance.   They are out now in various draped postures, attentive to nothing but cat dreams of slow mice and deep fields of catnip.  I have had supper, and simply need to give the pleco his coveted chunk of melon, which he waits for at the feeding end of the tank.  Let night work its magic, and relieve the worries of day; allow the subconscious do the job of sorting, answers will be there in the morning.  Sleep well, sleep deeply, shut doors, latch windows, turn keys.  Sentinels watch the harbor, even as our sense of hours blissfully falls away; green to starboard, port red.  Good night.  

Night Visitors

There are spiders in my bathroom, for there is an errant split between the screen and its frame that for some reason, gives off an aura of a hey lookit this to arachnids.  They think there are bugs in here, more available and juicier than the nitwitty flimsy moths that live by the thousands outside these brick towers.  Aha, they posit, I will beat the competition and live like royalty on the insect harvest inside this bathroom, so I must scooch my fat abdomen through the slit and build, build, build.

The days have been heated, and besides, I like an open window in the damp bathroom; I have told you of the brown, stemmed, 4-inch mushrooms that grew from the cabinet base one year.  Fresh air right off the lake, what could be better, especially when night falls and the breeze spills over sills?  To repair the screen would run a mere $27, but I am a bigger nitwit than those moths when it comes to removing it from a window many, many stories high.  It pops and twists a bit and temporarily hangs out suspended, and could put a dent in anyone's cranium and then boy would I catch it.

I did manage to get one other damaged screen out, the one where the spiders were clambering into My Bedroom and the patrol cats thought they were doing me a favor by bringing half-beat up spiders big as walking olives to my pillow.  Here!  Look!  Cat love!  The wiggling and the did I feel something brush my cheek (yes I did) overrode the nervous concern of accidental screenicide.  You know when you don't want to drop something and fear is attached, how strong your hands get?  I had imprints of crisscross screen in my palms and fingers for a day afterwards, plus there was the fussy worry of a cat jumping out of a ten-story window when I wasn't looking, and of course the re-insertion of the fixed screen back into the window without killing anyone.  I hate heights, so an added attraction was the possibility of a sudden gust of gravity sucking me out of the window to the pavement below.  The world I live in, you must stop by sometime.

But back to the bathroom; this brand of spider comes out at sunset, and busily weaves webs that would make the angels cry, they are so beautiful.  If you are a big spider, I am sorry, it is over quickly and my arm is powered by whack and accuracy.  If you are a smallish spider, I am also sorry in a different way for they are as industrious as the large ones, but are still babies.  They get to live an extra day, and I often direct them with paper towels back to the separation in the screen, so maybe they even get to escape.  Really, I need to even out the policy and develop a spider relocation process.  They get such a hard rap, and the species that clings to the walls here is said to be mild tempered and only wants a bug dinner.

The other day, one connected to a houseplant I keep in the bathroom window.  It was fascinating to watch, and the water drops from the showerhead caused beads of liquid to hang upon one of the tethering lines of this tiny web.  The spider went to delicate work, and tiptoed its way over to the strand; it then slowly went to each droplet and broke the surface tension with one poke, causing the water to run down, released, with no further pull on the trapeze wires.  After the three globules were cleared, the spider went back to the center to wait for maybe a fluttery lunch.  Admirable, efficient, and to steal from E. B. White, "Some spider".

Nonetheless, if the window has been left open past sunset, turning on the bathroom light causes whomever has eased their eight-legged self in to startle.  I imagine having as many eyes as they do magnifies the flash from the new-fangled instant start fluorescents even more than it does for me.  We all jump.  It just those legs, why the heck are humans upset by so many legs?  I'll get over it.

This weekend, there is another night visitor that comes round every year, the Perseid meteor shower.  I have never seen a firsthand event, but my friend saw three curve through the atmosphere as she walked her dog around ten o'clock in the evening at the city park.  The moon has been waxing gibbous, culmination tonight, washing out some of the show by its own full brilliance, yet many of the meteors and fireballs are bright enough to be evident.  Look to the northeast, for best luck.  Take the kids out in their jammies.  One year my son, his friend, and his friend's naturalist father set an alarm for three a.m., and waited out in sleeping bags to view.  Worth the groggy next day.

I have watched for signs of summer change, longing for cooler temperatures as we pass through mid-August.  The mushroom species Boletus bicolor is now appearing in woods, and makes a nice addition to soup.  Through the week, I saw: the red-tailed hawk sitting on a lamppost overlooking the route to downtown, and a sudden wash of a storm melt clay into a slurry, exposing fossil remains of creatures from before time; I saw the ordinance of a spider web, and a fish jump to catch a lacewing dinner.  I saw in the darkest of night a bat wing along a river, and a man release strings of helium balloons into the pitch black depth of the evening.  As they bobbled quickly upwards and spun in circular drafts, he used a flashlight to illuminate them as they rose beyond what could be seen.  I saw his face and the focused tension in his arms and spine as he reached the flashlight up, not wanting to lose them, wanting someone not there to see, and know, still. His eagerness and despair combined into the paradoxical effect of a lifetime compacted into a solitary moment.  I wondered if anyone else looked up to the sky besides our little group that evening, to meet the sight of balloons chasing each other as if they were birds, traveling in a far away story.

Over in the east, cumulus clouds hang near the horizon; to the west, the sun is beginning descent; maybe tonight will be the night to see a meteor, you will hear hoopla if I do.  The early evening spiders are beginning to spin webs outside the window, each with its little property and fence, they will chase the smaller spiders if feeling intruded upon.  The farmers from the morning markets are home at supper now, while the rest of us are enjoying the fruits and vegetables of summer they offered.  The first apples are here, the corn is rampant, and early potatoes have been boiled for potato salad, now cooling in the refrigerator.

Fold yourself into the night, it welcomes us as much as the day will with dawn.  There is more to see in the night sky, go get some binoculars if you like, many work with excellent precision for the same price that would only purchase a poorer telescope.  Take a good look at the moon, and invest in the same curiosity that sped other scientists before you to burn with curiosity and invention.  Let sleep come then, while you weave stories to tell in that space of time between waking and oblivion.  Sleep in this good night, peacefully, with clear hearts.

Time Traveller

Out on the open flat was a beaten shelter that housed lawn chairs and a few tables strewn with tools and informative pamphlets.  Examples of the finds were displayed, with printouts of the geological layers that held each species from 380 million years ago.  I have trouble understanding what one million amounts to, so the idea of this chunk of time makes my head fuzzy.  As a natural encyclopedia of the remains of Devonian marine life, the Penn Dixie Paleontological & Outdoor Education Center is within 12 miles of the city and makes an easy trip for families or anyone else inclined to delve into layers of ancient ocean bed.

Fossils were rife in the soil of Clarence, New York where I spent some childhood years, and a shoebox full of horned corals, crinoid stems and brachiopods was kept under the bed as part of my natural science collection, besides pheasant feathers, woodchuck skulls, and shed snake skins.  It fascinated me that these little sea shell things had once been living critters who went through the mysterious process of fossilization, older than Jesus, the dinosaurs, or even the continents.  The ocean that covered us was shallow, therefore the animals were small compared to those who lived in deeper, more expansive climes.  Also, and this was a surprise, today I learned that New York State happened to be a part of a land mass that was 20 to 30 degrees south of the equator at the time.  Sort of where Kenya in Africa is today.

It was a quick drive past the Ford Stamping Plant, left onto Bayview, left onto Big Tree, and left onto Bristol; closer than the southtowns mall, Penn Dixie is just tucked into what was once a quarry owned by a company who scraped off the top ten feet of shale to sell to a cement manufacturer.  Abandoned, it lay unused until geologists recognized that the exposed Windom layer was significant in an important chapter of Western New York history, simply because of the profusion of fossil life that lay on the ground waiting to be studied, or taken home in buckets and bags.

If you have a science-crazy kid, this is better than Disneyland.  No dinosaur bones to be had, for they were all shoved south by the glaciers some 13,000 years ago.  What's left can fill a quart-sized plastic bag in under a half an hour; bring a small trowel or claw tool to poke at the shale.  To pry out a fossil, all you need is to crumble the shale away with your fingers, it's that soft, almost like a dry mud.  Rinse them off when you get home, and for preservation, paint the fossil with a solution of white glue and water.  Once these things are exposed to air, some begin deterioration, especially the shells, and trilobites have fragile structure to begin with.  It was exciting to find examples of the listed specimens, I may have to find a new shoe box.

The reception was manned by a fellow named Keller who was most cordial in explaining that I shouldn't join the membership until next week, when a whole year would be added to the deal.  This week was just finishing up to September, when I would have to rejoin to get a year's benefits.  Who could argue?  I related that it was my first visit, and Mr. Keller then directed me to someone out in the field, supervising. This was Megan, who was studying geology at a local college and thus came to help diggers understand just what it all meant.  She trotted me into the various areas of the landscape, knowing where the trilobites surfaced, which corner provided cephalopods and clams, and where to dig for brachiopods and snails.  She glowed, and you could feel the mud of Devonian ocean bottoms pulsing through her veins as she bent down  to scoop up specimens, providing a brief dialogue concerning names, what rubble to note, and why we have no granite in western New York.  If you see a slab here, it's from Canada.

Her enthusiasm for the site was unabashed and open, she looked around with eyes that witnessed events from those 380 million years ago.  Split open layers of shale, and you'll find the traces of primordial life that is a little bit of her, of me, of you, and all the life that now exists on earth.  The thing is, she knows it; I think Mr. Keller does also.  There are people enamored of business, the science of economics, poetry, argument, words; good for them, someone needs to tend to it.  There are the ones, however, who poke and observe the natural world, the earth sciences, and these are my favorites.  So much 'why' out there, regarding the entities of sky, water, earth, and the things that call it home, and how their atoms, a sprinkling of everything,  composes the human body.  Brother cephalopod, I greet your shell centuries after the cataclysms, the spilling of sunlight into shallow depths, tectonic movement, and the mechanical inventions that scraped away soil to reveal your whereabouts.  I am undone.

Afterwards, with my bag of fossil loot in tow, I drive over to the nearby big box store for thread and cat food.  At the check out, all heads lift, for a tremendous deluge hits the flat roof, noisy as the fortieth day of Noah's boat ride, hatches battened.  We are at the mercy of the rain, which forcefully descends in white sheets, it's that thick.  I imagine it running in violent rivulets through the beds of shale, rinsing, lifting, and exposing more contents from before the first sauropod footprint.  It rains on us, also, and I canter briskly to the car while Scouts stationed at the front of the parking lot beg for buyers of fundraising candy bars so they can go home to dry off.  Rain, lovely rain.

Now at evening time, the cloud ceiling still hangs low, heavy with humidity.  I have yet to wash the specimens, but that is a job for tomorrow, along with the picking of blueberries.  Thinking of millions of years may not be as vivid tomorrow, but the vibration of salt and hemoglobin created by time and mud will endure, and maybe I will remember where I come from a bit better for the information.  Tonight, I sleep, the depths of the dark sky revolving as it did when.  Watch me, Orion, I breathe air and contemplate the stars, my feet walk paths of clay.  To bed, to bed.  Good night.

Cat Love vs. Water Pistol Surprise

Now this cat, this neutered male, came to me aloof, reserved, owning a deliberate take-it-or-leave-it ennui regarding human or other cat interaction.  No hissing or escape, not a sneer nor a purr.  He showed up in the kitchen for breakfast and dinner; his otherwise address was high atop my china cabinet amongst the bookshelves.  Large, grey and white, this is the cat who would violently react when taken to the vet.  He drew blood on three humans and resisted the heaping helping of tranquilizer until the return home, saving the upheaval of stomach contents (a sign that the tranq is taking effect) for the rug, eight o'clock at night.

I had gotten him as a balance to the four girl cats, having recently lost the oldest male, dear Martian, earlier that spring.  One of the attractions to him was that he let me walk up to him at the vets where he temporarily resided; another tally in favor was his coloration.  The grey cats I previously lived with were exceptional in wisdom, affection, and education, and this flimsy thinking afforded an opening of a cat carrier, to plop him back home with us.  "He's the most mellow cat," intoned the younger vet assistant, "he just doesn't like to be picked up, but that should go away."  Ho ho, says I.

It's true, loud, sudden noises don't bother him even though his hearing is on level.  He sleeps most of the day, in his largeness, and vacuuming causes little more than a half of a mild hurray.  This went on for the first year, yet I could see that my ministrations were becoming looked-for: a daub of whipped cream from the spray can in the morn, pillow-shaped treats in the afternoon, and catnip, catnip, catnip.  He began to show relaxation when the side of his neck was scratched, the tiniest of inaudible purrs felt in his throat.  The first time I brushed him, I was ready to drop, roll and run at the first sign of fang, but this exercise on his head extended down his back, gingerly, and the look on his face was simply a what the hell is she doing but god's nightgown, I am loving it expression.  I am now able to call him by running fingers over the bristles of the brush, and thus remove wads of underfur before it becomes dust bunnieville.

He has become the first cat to run to me when I enter the door, and will playfully try to catch my legs if he is in a happy mood.  I am pleased to see him comfortable, but what has happened is a lowering of defenses and a raising of a grain I haven't seen well, ever.  I would hear him call and chatter pleasantly in the night, I love to hear cats talk; my fifteen year old cat Min makes sounds similar to a Pavarotti yodel when she runs the hallway.  Recently, as in the past two months, the grey cat has the full heart of a man with a grilled cheese sandwich and a cold beer; this emotional anthem spills out in chirps and hey baby let's have a date singsong, usually directed to the girl cats who will give him a beat down.  Tulip, Snowbelle, and Min suggest worlds of hurt if he even looks their way, Kai on the other hand, is a gentle thing who often needs rescue from this clumsy nonsense, yet will let him have a one-ski two-ski if pushed.  Now, close your children's ears, cause here comes the water pistol part.

The cat had lifted himself forward in bonding with the human can opener by curling up at a far corner of the bed, sleeping deeply in innocence and recovery from a hard life.  I was flattered, oh look, he really likes me after all gushery welled up in my ventricles.  Around when the spring brought back the robins, raised crocus from dormancy, and caused squirrels to chase each other up tree trunks, the cat has now found an object of affection that won't fight back.  My blankets.  He grabs a chunk in his mouth and pulls backwards while mrowing concertos of smoove grooves.  This is lunacy, but bearable, and he goes away after maybe five minutes of the blanket not falling back in love with him.  I am stronger than this cat, and thus the blanket stays with me and doesn't end up in a heap puking into the toilet the next day after too much booze, neon, and loose morals.

Lights out one evening, and I felt something unusual going on, which became an unholy What the hell are you doing to my leg?  Shoving became a battle, apparently he likes a leg that plays hard to get and is a total lunkhead to the word NO.  I dug out a water pistol, gave my leg a lecture on making good choices in life, and have let him have a blast of cold, wet justice.  Now, this is the cat that likes to stick his head under a running faucet for a drink, but water anywhere else is defilement and shocking.  Thank heavens, for he is now receptive to the idea of self-government, that there is no annexing other cats or human body parts without retaliation including a possible acceleration of warfare, complete with home decorating magazines whipped with unerring accuracy.

So think of us when you turn out the lights with whatever family you may have, near or far.  Really, the cat goes away in a hurry after a shot from the seahorse squirt gun, to rearrange coat and dignity, and it will subside, things never, never stay the same.  What else is it, but life.

There is a light rain, nothing to get going about, but any precipitation is welcome during this unusually dry summer.   Nothing like listening to rain on a roof, something I haven't heard in years, but then again, things never do stay the same, and there will be a roof again, I can feel it.  Goodnight my cats, goodnight robins, crocus returned to dormancy, squirrels raising families and gathering.  Goodnight good people, sleep safe without worry, find dreams to cling to.  Sleep.

Biome

During the colder parts of the year, a bag of bird seed sits on the floor behind the driver's seat of the car.  I surreptitiously strew seed in hopes of feeding the juncos and chickadees, while knowing that a few rodents are being kept full as well.  What can you do?  Everyone's hungry, and I stick to the smaller seed for finches.  My hand clenches as much as can be pulled out of the bag at once, and it is tossed off-property and through the fence, landing at the base of one of the dying crabapple trees.  Seeds scatter, inside the car and out.

I meant to vacuum, sort of, like I meant to remember to close the sunroof the past two times it poured.  The upholstery dried in the hot weather easily, but apparently not all of the water evaporated, for when pulling out a bag of groceries today, there was growing grass coming up from the floor of the car.  I have a garden inside the car that is three inches tall and green.  It pushes up around the bicycle rack, growing through buckles and straps, and well, looks fabulous.

There was the year that good-sized mushrooms grew between the bathroom sink cabinet and the tub.  Cup fungus from the Pezizales family appears alongside houseplants in their pots.  I can't grow decent parsley on a windowsill no matter how much cajoling and bribery occurs, but apparently I can grow millet in my car.  Perhaps I should stick the parsley in the automotive greenhouse and see what happens, toss in some basil and oregano and maybe a tomato plant.

It will have to go, I will have to mow the inside of the car before holes rot in the floorboards and I end up with a Flintstone mobile.  A shame, the little plants are so optimistic and independent.   I think that's what I like about it the most, that the conditions were just good enough for the birdseed to germinate, and now the blades stretch upwards towards light, like we all do when given the encouragement.

Night has come, and the clouds of day obliterate the stars of the evening sky.  Can't see much in the city as it is, but the larger phenomena still cause wonder when the night is clear.  The moon will rise larger and orange nearest earth's horizon, and still, after thousands of years the reason for the illusion eludes science.  On the thirteenth of this month, the Perseids will fly through under a full moon, supposedly falling from the vicinity of the constellation Perseus.  Not just the plants are busy, the whole universe is in motion.

Lay aside your duties of the day and come to peace with the evening hours.  Let go of work and put yourself to reflection and slower thought, fantasy and wish.  Lay your head down with the rest of the diurnals, and sail through the hours blessedly dark, quiet, and clear of distraction.  Sleep well, it is well deserved; be ready to meet the day.  Good night.