I live in a small town. And you would think it quiet. But it’s not. A major highway runs through my town. It is nearby. About 325 feet at its closest point.  And we live between two major cities and places where those people want to go. Their tires and big trucks make a lot of noise. It’s mostly quiet at night, but it starts to hum at first light. One upshot, and this is something of a positive, is the bird song is loud because they have to compete with the cars, and we have plenty of birds.

The brush pile is gone, hauled away in a big sixteen foot trailer with four sides. A lone man with a skid-steer did the job. He also hauled away some old pallets, the skeletal remains of mulch pits from the days when we gardened in that area. And he also took the old landscape cloth I dug up last week in the front yard. Then he tidied up the grounds before leaving. It’s nice to have that area cleaned. Now I have to figure out a plan for going forward because brush is inevitable and I know more will come.

Big day, today. My brush pile is going away. Unfortunately, it is probably home to critters. I guess you might consider this a version of gentrification. We own the land and would like to use it as something other than a home for mice, snakes, scorpions, and whatever else might find a big brush pile an appealing place to live. It will be interesting to see what departs. Of course, whatever leaves also might be too small for us to notice, but that’s just the way of the world.

Anatomy of rain on a metal roof. I’ve had two styles of metal roof while living in the Hill Country. My first roof was screw-down panels, a fairly typical old style roof. It was replaced recently by a standing seam roof with no exposed screws. Falling rain sounds essentially the same on both styles, a lovely patter of falling water on tin. The difference slips in when the rain is soft and the water gathers on the roof before sliding to the ground.

I’m in a tiny, personal groove. I cleaned my gutters yesterday, and put plants in the ground. It rained last night, right on cue. My rain barrels are full, and the new plants got a good soaking. More rain is promised, and as a bonus, it’s cool outside. For the plant fans, the new additions are Gregg’s Mist Flower, Catmint Walkers Low, and Upright Rosemary. All have proven to do well in my soil so I decided to add a few more.

I lost a shovel last month which seems a hard thing to do until you lose the shovel and it’s lost and impossible to find. I have no idea what went into the losing of the shovel. We had it. Then we didn’t. I looked everywhere. High and low. It was nowhere to be found. I was perplexed. In the past I would have blamed the kids, and even though my son uses my tools he usually knows where he’s put them. In the case of the shovel, he had no idea where it had gone.

Yesterday was a day where all the tumblers fell into place, and I unlocked a little joy. I found a letter I needed in my junk email. The city approved my replat. I scheduled my new HVAC service. I found a guy to remove my brush pile, which is taller than me and has more than brush in it, and looked scary to burn. And I watched a group of starlings bathe in my bird bath. To top it all off I went to bed at 9:15 last night and didn’t wake up until 5:30 this morning, which counts as a full night of sleep in my book.

Our dining room table has been in the family for more than 45 years. We bought it for our second home at an unfinished furniture store, a good young couple project with more time than money. It’s oak, round, with two leaves and six chairs. Just right for a family of five with lots of aunts, uncles, and friends close at hand. The chairs are scarred by dogs, kids, loads of family dinners, and countless holiday gatherings. It has lived in four homes.

It’s April Fools day, but I don’t feel like a joke, or making a joke, or having a joke played on me. Nothing really seems funny anymore. My body aches, my spirit aches, and a random sort of meanness feels afoot. I’d like to be happy. On most days I am. Especially now with everything in bloom. I noticed yesterday that the Eve’s Necklace is turning pink with flowers, and it has become a big tree, so there will be lots of them. And there are flowers on the Marie Pavia rose. And my body aches from work, and that’s a good thing.

I’m about 25% through the job of stripping the landscape cloth out of the new north garden. It’s harder than it might seem. First of all, most of the old mulch is still sitting there. Secondly, the material is now tied to the ground by coastal bermuda grass which has deep roots and strong runners. Finally, grass has grown through the material and holds the mulch in place. So, even when it’s finally pulled up there’s lots of weight.

Every once in a while, after watching an event unfold, I like to ask myself, what would I have done? I did it yesterday, for instance, while reading up on the events that led Immigration and Customs Enforcement to take Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish national and Fulbright scholar, here on an F-1 student visa as a doctoral student, into custody and strip her of her visa. Apparently, she was picked up because she was one of four authors of an editorial piece last year in the Tufts student paper protesting Israel’s actions in Palestine.

I wonder. Who were the men and women who arrested Tufts University graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk? Were any of them married? If so, did they kiss their wives or husbands goodbye that morning and tell them they loved them?

I am in the home stretch of my spring fling of gardening. Beds are mulched. Weeds are pulled. Plants are in the ground. Everything that should be green is green. Yesterday and the day before we got more than an inch of rain, and more is scheduled today. And it’s the best sort of rain. Slow and steady.  Grasses are growing, the trees are replacing depleted stores, and the ground is softening, which is more good news for me, because I still have a few spots that need cleaning and repair.

I am in the warm embrace of spring. My bluebonnets are up and last night's rain should be just the drink they need to really flower, and the sky’s water will do the same for the spiderworts. The Irises are blooming as well, benefiting from their move to better soil and more constant sun. It will be quite a show out my kitchen window this year. And less you think I’m locked in purple, I have a Crossvine and a Texas honeysuckle giving me red and yellow blooms.

Adventures in doctoring. I showed up in a timely fashion on Monday for the scan to check my aneurysm repair only to be told that the machine was down and I’d need to reschedule. So, I did. For the next morning. Early. Once again I showed up in a timely manner and once again was told I needed to reschedule. They found me a slot close to noon at another facility just down the road. I went and got it done. My rescheduled physician’s appointment, which was to follow the first scan, is this afternoon, by phone.

Woke up to the sound of thunder and rain on the windows last night as a big thunderstorm rolled through the Houston area. I’m in town for the first of what I hope are many annual checkups on my repaired abdominal aortic aneurysm. I’m staying with my oldest son, the same son who came up last week to my place to chunk on guitars, and we did it again last night just for a bit before bed. He helped me work out some kinks in one of my songs.

There is so much going on these days in the world outside my fence that it’s hard not to notice, but one thing’s for sure, trying to get reliable news about anything, is a little bit like drinking from a fire hose. The stories come at me in bits and pieces and new bits replace old pieces before I can figure out what the first bit meant and follow ups get lost in all the confusion if any follow ups come at all. It’s enough to make someone want to run and hide, except that may be the point, although that just might be me trying to give purpose to random events.

I have a swivel rocker my late wife and I purchased shortly after we bought our first house in 1975. It’s an Ethan Allen chair and it was our first piece of furniture that wasn’t a hand me down or bought from an outlet store. It was re-upholstered in 2010 when we built our current home. It long ago lost its central, front room role to bigger, fancier chairs, mostly recliners, and was relegated to the bedroom. It came back to the front room this year, when I took over its bedroom space for my music.

I worked outside yesterday and at the end of the day I was worn out from the wind. I’ve had days of it blowing from the west and the north and now it’s blowing from the south. And it’s blowing hard, and making loud noises, and tumping things over. It’s like walking down a crowded sidewalk or jostling through people at a big music event. You’re pushed and beat upon. I’ve breathed dust from every part of Texas, and none of it feels good for me. I want it to stop.

The spring cleaning of the gardens is making steady progress. The next big project is to mulch the area that holds my newest trellis and was once home to a peach tree since departed. I’ve put down limestone blocks to replace the old fence as the back border, but there's still a couple of those to go, and there are a few windblown grasses to pull up. Then I’ll turn the old mulch, add the new and we’ll be done.