A MESSAGE FROM THE GULAG

Husband is content at the Pink Cottage feeding the muster (yes this is a correct term for a collection of peafowl) of birds, revising his novel, breathing in the fragrant spring air and watching the daffodils nudge their way towards sunlight.   

Contented Husband 

Wife, that would be me, isn’t quite so ecstatic.  I am relocated temporarily from Somerset to Toronto; fulfilling my tour of duty tending to the most Crotchety Pensioner (forthwith referred to as CP) in the GTA (that’s Greater Toronto Area.)

Recently the Economist named Toronto the World’s best city to live in.   Perhaps from April to October, but from where I freeze I beg to differ.  I contemplate heading out in temperatures hovering around -25, or with the wind chill factor, -40.  The Friday before I left the UK the sun shone down on Somerset, the robins, blue tits, and chaffinches sang joyously, and even the jackdaws greeted us en-mass out the back of the house, clamoring for breakfast.  The hillsides were so green they looked photo-shopped.  The day I flew out the verdant countryside was lousy with leaping lambs.

Then....

....And Now

 Three hours of shoveling snow can shrivel the bloom off the rose that is Toronto.  The neighbour next door flaunts his fancy snow blowing machine, the newly blown powder drifting down onto the driveway I’ve just finished clearing in order to make my escape.  CP doesn’t believe in newfangled machinery.

A Nice but Frigid Stroll  By My Alma Mater

Out on the street the beauty of pristine white snow is fouled by splotches of dog urine, then stippled with motor oil and sprinkled with salt.  As reluctant as I am to venture out into this subarctic hell, getting out of the house is a necessary ordeal.  It takes fifteen minutes to layer on enough clothing to protect against the elements.  Then bundled up like a Siberian Cosmonaut ready for a space walk, I realize I’ve forgotten something.  I pull off salt chewed boots and tip-toe back into the house to retrieve a bag of garbage that I will ferry out into the world and deposit in one of the many public garbage cans that Sister and I have identified throughout the GTA. 

No Words Needed

Refuse must be removed from the house covertly, before CP gets hold of it.  It seems as time slips through his hands, he refuses to let anything go.  One characteristic many elderly folk acquire is the inability to throw anything out.  When the pensioner is also a World War Two survivor, you can ratchet that trait up a gazillion fold.  Nothing should be tossed out, ever… because you never know when you might need it; no can, plastic container, nor their lids, no piece of foil or defunct car battery.  My father has lived in this house since I was ten…. he started collecting things on the day we moved in.  If it weren’t for diligent culling by my mother…  well, I wouldn’t be able to find the back door.  When our mother passed away, or escaped, as some have said, her daughters took over.

In his dotage CP has become McGyver. “Don’t throw that out!” he shouts when he catches us removing blown light bulbs, TVs old enough not to work but not so old as to be vintage, ancient tinned goods, prescriptions that expired a decade ago, emptied paper towel rolls, shoes that fit no one which begs the question where did they come from, used cat litter and a fake Christmas tree from which most of the fake boughs have mysteriously disappeared,  “I can use it!” 

Vintage Fruit Cocktail

He once fashioned a winter hat from a section of our mother’s discarded leather coat.  It was red with a black fur lining and trim.  The hat was pointed.  CP looked like an insane elf when he wore it.  Now he wears multiple hats underneath it.  “Have to layer for the cold,” he says.  Yes, I agree, but he wears so many layers it's like he's mummified.  Perhaps he is pre-mummifying himself for us.

CP has shrunk with age, as one does, as I will and you will.  He’s also partially blind and partially deaf, and moving pretty slowly.  This makes it easy for us to race past him unnoticed on garbage days with empty boxes, cans of solidified paint and six foot long rolls of decomposing carpet.  Had he noticed us he would have claimed there was some use for every one of these items.  In years gone by everything removed, upon our mother’s request, was scrutinized.  Sometimes CP dragged things up from the bottom of the driveway, and then relocated them in the basement, or the family room or the garage, and there they remained, unused and gathering dust. 

 

Before we started our removal program, under our mother’s direction, the family room and the garage were unusable.  To this day the garage is the repository for an un-drivable car, an un-floatable boat, fishing poles, nets without bottoms, tents and other remnants of a former sporty life.

Stuff

Sister and I filled a dumpster with unusable detritus several years ago.  We personally hauled 1.7 tons of formerly used lumber.  It was during a heat-wave.  She and I were out in the driveway wielding a chainsaw.  The city had ordered CP to remove this build-up from his property under threat of fine.  Even so he tried to squirrel away bits and pieces of rubbish for future use.  The garden is now usable, at least when it’s not buried in three feet of snow.  

Thanks to our endeavours the family room is now perfectly habitable, but not in time for our mother to enjoy.  The two family cats have taken it over as a refuge; a necessity since CP’s diminished sight means he routinely sits on one or the other of them as they nap in the living room.  

Don't Tell Him Where I Am

 

There’s still no room in the garage for the rental cars Sister and I have when we’re here.  CP was hoping we could use his un-drivable car with its manual choke, different sized wheels on front and back, and engine the size of a skidoo’s.

In The Driver's Seat

 Come Rain or Snow or Sleet...

Disposal of things broken and useless is a Sisyphean task, and we are mindful of not removing items which have real emotional meaning to CP, but we’re pretty sure he won’t miss the box of ancient rubber bands which decomposed upon touch or the carpet sweeper that fell apart when CP picked it up or the copies of the Etobicoke Guardian dating from nineteen-eighty-three.  I haul these things across snow banks the size of Somerset sheep making my way to random dumpsters in windswept parking lots.  This is my battle.  At home, CP has his own battle; a daily one, to hang on to his memories and his mind, and wonder where the hell that box of elastic bands disappeared to.   

Meanwhile.... Back in Somerset

   

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2015.... SIGNS IN THE UNIVERSE AND CLOSER

Another year bites the dust.  Happy New Year and Welcome to 2015. 

Christmas and New Years are always such a weird time. All kinds of emotions swimming about.  This was Husband and my first Christmas in the UK together.  Out with old, in with the new, letting go of stuff we'd rather forget, looking forward to...

Here at the Pink Cottage the holiday is especially tinged with emotion.  Four years ago this week Husband's sweet and eccentric sister, not yet out of her forties, passed away, starting a train of events that ultimately led us here.

Heather

 

Sister-In-Law was a bit of a collector, and among the things she collected was Christmas paraphernalia.  She loved Christmas, like a kid loves Christmas.  She decorated her home so there was barely enough free surface space to put down a coffee cup.  Trinkets bobbled and tinsel glittered.  If she could have she would have left the decorations up all year round... sometimes she did.  It was always Christmas in her heart.  So, we decided our Christmas ritual will now include leaving our decorations up until January the 8th, the anniversary of her death.

I Love Christmas!

 

Christmas day was stunning.  Blue skies with voluptuous clouds floating across the horizon.  We walked up to the top of the Polden Hills to the Hood Monument lookout and Husband drifted some of her ashes to the wind in a spot overlooking the Glastonbury Tor.  Sister-in-law was made for Glastonbury, she would have loved it.  Now a little part of her will always have it in view.  When we come back to Somerset after a trip, the sight of the Tor is a sign that we are not far from home.  Now it has other meanings too.

Husband and his Sister

Aren't we always looking for signs, little signals portending good things, giving us a feeling that luck is on our side, or that someone might be watching out for us somewhere? That beautiful blue Christmas morning made us feel good in our hearts and we thought of Husband's sister and took it all as a sign that she was with us. 

A few months before we changed our lives and moved here Husband and I went to Canada to scatter the ashes of his mother, father, and sister in Georgian Bay.  We were en-route to pick up his Aunt and Uncle when Husband announced, "I need a coffee."  I pulled into the nearest mini-mall.  
Husband stood in line ordering. 

A Sign on A Sign

I gazed out the window not looking at anything in particular and noticed where we were: Heatherwood Square.  Sister-In-Law's name was Heather Wood.  A sign on a sign.   

The morning we were to scatter the ashes Husband first went for a drive alone.  Well, not alone, exactly.  He took the ashes in their urns for a final visit to the place that had meant so much to his family.  

They had grown up skiing in this area, and it was at the old 'chalet' that they had their very best times.  After a few moments of contemplation, he drove off and suddenly had the feeling he was not alone.  He looked out the driver's window.  A deer ran along side of the car.  In all his years at the chalet he had never seen a deer this close.  Another sign?  That's how he took it: they were sending him off as he was sending them off. These kinds of signs are comforting and stay with us.

We read many things as signs, and unfortunately some are discomforting. This first week of this New Year began grimly with the murders in the offices of Charles Hebdo in Paris.  The parade of woes around the world is depressing, and seemingly growing.  This burst of violence is a sad introduction into 2015.  We might take this as a sign of more bad things to come, of people becoming increasingly cruel to one another, of the dissolution of human relationships.  How do we keep from becoming overwhelmed by the sad, bad news?  Sometimes it's so powerful it feels like there isn't room in our heads or hearts for the good news.

Maybe by acknowledging small things every day and performing tiny kindnesses whenever we can, we can see the world in a better light, make some kind of difference, make our own signs for others to interpret. 

Husband and I choose to seek out signs that the world is a good place.  Little things.  The robin that perches on a branch and sings at us through the window, or the other one that hops in our back door for snacks. 

Please Miss, May
I Have More

A glorious morning.  A blue sky.  The deep chocolate brown of fresh tilled soil, the hike up Lollover Hill behind the house, long Skype calls with dear friends deeply missed, meeting and finding a commonality with new people, the sight of the first spring lambs (last week!), the ringing of the church bells next door, and the new lemon yellow daffodils blooming in January.  

It's That Time Again

A smile is a sign of happiness and sometimes just smiling at people and saying hello can spread good will.  Although some of our grumpier neighbours take this brazen act of congeniality as an assault, or just a sign of our suspected madness. Bitter Man and Scaffolding Man (see previous blog) do not take kindly to broad smiles and good mornings, but they're getting them anyway.  And in two short weeks my ability to spread kindness will be tested as I head back to Toronto to care for the most cantankerous man in the Western Hemisphere.  I hope for a sign that all will go well.    

A robin sings outside my window.    

A Good Sign

          

THE WORST PUB

A village's pub is the soul of the community.  It's where you catch up on gossip, have a pint after work, meet friends and neighbours.  Not here.  Not in our village.  Even before our pub was condemned and closed it wasn't very inviting.

When we first looked at living here we were forewarned. "If you're looking for a village with a good pub, it's not this one.  Our pub is crap."  Point taken, but we loved the area and a pub was not going to make or break our decision, besides, we learned there were at least seven good pubs in a six mile radius, who cares if our local stunk.  "But you've got to pop in for a pint anyway," we were advised, "it must be visited."

Don't Go Here

Soon after we arrived we decided to check it out.  I've written about this place before... the low ceiling Husband cracked his head on, the dim lighting, the complete silence when we walked in the door, all eyes on us as we sat on the ancient cracked bar stools, the fire-place you could pitch a tent in. When the murmur of conversation resumed it became apparent that each and every one of the regulars knew who we were, while we had never laid eyes on any of them.  A guy at the end of the bar quoted Thomas Hardy's A Trampwoman's Tragedy at great length, then leaned in to us conspiratorially and announced in a beery, cheery voice, "There's wife-swappers up on your hill."

Husband and I weren't sure we'd heard what we thought we'd heard.  We looked at each other for corroboration.  Yes... he'd said there were wife-swappers on our hill!  Who among the elderly church-goers, the hard-working farmers, the sheep and the big black and white dairy cows, swapped wives? From then on we looked at our neighbours wondering, but never knowing.

Do Go Here

A man sitting next to us struck up a conversation.  A commuter, an outsider like us, he told us he pops in for pints every day on his drive home.  Within moments we realized he was a Man Who Knows Everything; the history of the old Bristol Road, where to travel in Albania, everything you never wanted to know about the Imperial measuring system, the body count of the Monmouth Rebellion, the best recipe for Spotted Dick, the origins of the Somerset accent, the meaning behind village names like Compton Pauncefoot and Nempnett Thrubwell, and on and on and on and on.  Husband reminded me of an imaginary commitment.  We excused ourselves and left. 

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com
/recipes/2686661/spotted-dick

The next time we dropped into the pub was many months later.  "Where have you been?" the barkeep said, like we were regulars who'd somehow slipped off his radar. 

My cousin in the Midlands called.  'So, I read about your pub in the paper while I was doing research for our trip to you,' she said.

What?  We immediately Googled it.  There in black and white in a local Somerset paper was the down and dirty on our publican and his wife.  Seems they had a neighbour, a recent widower suffering from dementia.  Seems they were assigned power of attorney over said elderly pensioner, and then pilfered funds for a splashy wedding for their daughter, and proceeded to drain his bank account.  They were charged and found guilty, and yet remarkably, they were still running the pub and not in jail... only fined.  However, we were told, they were running the pub accessorized by House Arrest Ankle Bracelets.

Evening Wear Ankle Bracelet

It was at this time we learned the difference between a Free-hold pub and a Lease-hold.  Free-hold means the publican owns the pub outright and can serve whatever he wants to serve.  Lease-hold means they have a lease, usually from a corporation, usually from a brewery.  Our local is a lease-hold, which means some brewery somewhere let ankle-braceleted felons pull pints.  

Beasts! we thought, how dare they roam free, well, semi-free, and serve the public.  Not for long.  One day we saw a big notice plastered across the pub's sign offering anyone with a pulse the opportunity to live the dream of running a pub.  The place had been shut down.  Again gossip filtered to us.  Turns out the pub's kitchen was a nightmare.  A real nightmare.  An unusable nightmare.  

A Business Opportunity

The publican was a large man who traveled in an electric scooter.  Unwilling to let the minor detail of a condemned kitchen hamper his food service he came up with an ingenious way around it.  There was a perfectly good kitchen in his home on the other side of the street; a major street, more like a small highway.  So the answer was simple.  Customers would place food orders at the pub.  Food would be prepared at his kitchen across the street, then the publican would ferry the orders to the pub across the busy main artery that connects this area to several other towns that actually have wonderful pubs.  He did this on his mobility scooter.  We were told that once this was discovered, it was the nail in the pub's coffin.  

A village without a pub is like a day without sunshine.  So this summer saw notices everywhere announcing pop-up pub nights on the cricket pitch.  What a perfect way to spend a summer eve, on gorgeous green lawns sipping a glass of wine, and watching a cricket match... all proceeds going to the club.  It was the best antidote to the bad taste left by the pub-that-will-not-be-named.   

VILLAGE LIFE

     I have been blog-less... buried up to my ears with a revision and then tending to my irascible father in Toronto for a spell.  An eye-opening experience on many levels.  In the Leszczynski house there are three topics of conversation; tomatoes, kittens, and the end of the world.  Enough said. Then Husband and I took advantage of a wonderful opportunity to travel a bit and so, I remained blog-less.  No more. 

  

More Travel

A Little Travel

Husband as Amsterdam
Art Installation

Once Upon a Time... in Metz

     

Arty Husband at Centre Pompidou, Metz 

     We were gone but were not missed.  We barely ever see anyone in our tiny village.  We have met people, but they live in other nearby villages.  We don't encounter neighbours on the street.  Few people walk here... unless they have dogs, which function as a social introduction.  'What a lovely dog... what breed is he?' proving social status leeches into the four-legged world.  Nope, we are not only aliens, but we walk without a dog.  Freaks.  

Husband Tries to Poach Other's
Dogs in a Feeble Bid to Fit In

     Actually,  I exaggerate.  The friends we did make, who all moved away (was it us?), have said that even people who've lived here forty or fifty years are outsiders.  The only real insiders are the families who've farmed the land for centuries.  The rest of us are upstarts, interlopers, or as they say in Somerset, grockles.  Still, in spite of this isolation, the fact we have no shops, and that the pub was shut down for health reasons (more on that in the next blog) we manage to reap all the gossip that's fit to repeat. News migrates through town, and sometimes beyond, with the speed of a brush fire.  It is gleaned in the farm shops, the post-office, and a small local paper.

Rush Hour in the Village

      

     Big news in the village was the arrival of a new peacock.  It's probably the topic of village conversation, not that we are in those conversations, wherever they might occur, probably behind drawn drapes.  Just before he moved, our friend across the street called to say 'There's a peacock on our roof', knowing Penny the Peahen winters with us and occasionally drops in during the summer months.   

     

     Husband skyped me in Toronto with the news.  Upon my return, we heard the bird for ourselves; saw him far off perched on rooftops, screeching at dusk and dawn.  Wonderful!  A mate for Penny!

Look Closely... There's A
Peacock on that Roof

     

     We went over to see the new bird for ourselves.  He's beautiful.  Brilliant blinding sapphire feathers.  We tried to take pictures but it was too dark.  His calls were piercing and fearsome, and no one nearby could sleep through them.  A neighbour peeked out from behind his hedge, saw us admiring the fowl.  'Bloody loud,' he said, 'wish the bloody thing would just go away.'  Husband and I exchanged a look, 'a Pea-hater!' we both thought. 

     

     Husband and I tried to match-make... we're romantics at heart.  Poor lonely Penny didn't have to be lonely any more.  Had the new boy in town arrived looking for true love?  Would he and Penny settle in the neighbourhood and have pea-chicks?  We enticed the potential lovebirds with a buffet of every exotic bird pellet and seed we could find.  We left the gate ajar hoping the two would find the Pink Cottage a suitable and safe place for their tryst.  We stopped just short of strewing the driveway with rose petals.  It was not to be.  Shortly after the peacock's arrival an agitated Penny ran onto the property, looked around frantically, pecked at some insect nibbles, heard the shriek of the newly arrived male, and then bolted like the demons of hell were after her.  Then nothing.  The male's calls rang through dusk and dawn, but Penny was silent.  Husband was distraught.  Penny seemed intent on remaining the virgin queen of the village.  

What Am I...An Escort Service!

     

     Never mind the birds... there was other huge news.  A moving van arrived in town.  Two sets of neighbours became near and dear to us, one relocated to a nearby village, the other pair went to Portugal.  In order to achieve the latter, a moving van was hired to remove their life to the Algarve.  It was quite a substantial moving van, and brought the neighbourhood to a stop.  People stood on the street hands on hips, they peeked over hedges, slowed down in cars, rode by on bikes, trotted by on horseback, necks craned, to look at a moving van.  It was the talk of the town.  We have never seen more of our neighbours out than we did that day on the street surveying the van. Now it is gone.  Everyone has receded behind drawn drapes and closed blinds again... and we miss our moved neighbours.     

     

     News in our village travels so quickly, it can move over land and sea. We were in Belgium when an email arrived with a picture sent by friends staying at the Pink Cottage.  It was a picture of Penny the Peahen at the Pink Cottage.... with TWO PEA-CHICKS!  

Meet the Pea-Chicks

Penny and the Pea-Chicks

     Husband couldn't believe it.  To use a local expression, we were gobsmacked.  Apparently Penny's annual spring time disappearances are born of the fact that she goes off somewhere safe to lay eggs.  Each year, for six years, she has sat on her eggs, and each year no pea-chick has sprung  from any of the ivory orbs.  A sad fact Husband had discovered, but kept from me deeming it too upsetting.  But this year is different. As it turns out love did bloom in the village. 

Strolling Pea-Chick

     

     We found ourselves abroad, wishing we were home to see the chicks.  The pea-chick news ricocheted round the world, via internet, to Guernsey, Belgium and Portugal, and then over to Toronto to my sister and now, after this blog, it will shoot through the US and Canada and the UK... making Penny and her pea-chicks possibly  the most viewed pea-family around.  

     Husband and I are besotted.  We stare at the pea-chicks like we hatched them ourselves.  They all sleep out behind the house, up in a tree.  Penny tucks the two little chicks under her great wings, so only two little pea-heads are visible.  It was all I could do to keep Husband from pitching a tent under the tree and arming himself with a shovel to protect the birds from foxes and badgers.  We are smitten with our new friends in the village.  

The Happy Family

THE MADMAN AND THE PEAHEN

   We first laid eyes on Penny the Peahen when we arrived at the Pink Cottage on a frigid March day last year. 

My Name's Penny. I'll Be
Your Peahen on This Trip

She's a startling fowl with her nugget sized head, lumbering body, and perpetually perplexed expression.  Frost clung to her weather-beaten wings.  The wind whipped the paltry crest feathers clinging to her head.  She looked bedraggled and miserable.  It was love at first sight.  We'd never seen anything like her.  She waddled around the garden eyeing us while we tried to woo her.  Give us an animal in distress and we're putty. 

Seeking Refuge From 
Foul Weather 

     As our circle of local friends widened we asked questions about the bird. Everybody in this village knows everything about everyone else, and Penny had been hanging around for a while. Someone must know how this lone peafowl got here.

     
     'There was a break-out from a breeder's place over in Baltonsborough a few years ago,' we were told.  I pictured a huddled mass of peafowl plotting a great escape. 'There used to be two but Penny's mate was electrocuted by a sheep fence,' someone else said.  That tugged on our heartstrings... a tragic peafowl love story, now only a heartbroken hen left, never to know the joy of parenting peachicks. She had us wrapped around her gnarly claw. 'We call her Doris,' another neighbour chimed in.     

Don't Think You Can Ignore Me!

I'm Coming In

      Husband started Googling peafowl facts.  Our expeditions to local farmers markets included hauling back bags of suet to feed the bird. There are two flavours, Husband said, insect and fruity; she prefers the fruity nibbles when it’s warm, and the insect nibbles when it’s cold. The bird began to plump up, look healthier. Every night we watched from the window as she performed the maneuver to get up to her perch.  Peafowls sleep in trees to elude predators. "What if she gets too fat to fly into her tree at night?" I asked Husband.  

Penny Well Fed 

Thanks so Much for Planting
These Seedlings for Me

     
















     
     One day, instead of hanging around outside the house, Penny headed down the road. Husband watched her, crestfallen.  'Where is she going?'  She began to disappear each day, only coming back to roost at night. 'Someone's feeding her something she can't resist,' he said, 'they're trying to woo her away.' Husband started buying fancy seed mixtures. 'No!' he said to me in the pet store, 'Don't get the black and white sunflower seeds, she only likes the all black ones.'  Still, she kept wandering off. 'Pea-slut', he muttered under his breath as she lumbered down the road.

     
     One morning last May a big bounding Dalmation loped onto the property.  Penny's honks of distress blasted through the entire village. We raced out of the house in time to see Penny's bulbous butt airborne, like a feathery dirigible flying across the street.  She landed on the rooftop of a neighbour's house. That was it. She didn't come back. Husband was bereft. We could hear the nightly sound of her taunting honks from trees elsewhere in the village.  Friends visited.  'Where's the Peahen,' they asked. 'Gone,' Husband answered sadly.

     When my mother died we decided we would go to Canada for a while to help out my dad.  A week before leaving, after an absence of three months, Penny showed up.  Husband was thrilled to see her.  'What will she do when we're gone?' I said.  'Exactly what she's been doing for the last three months,' Husband answered, 'sleep around.'

     
     Three months later Husband returned to The Pink Cottage on his own. 'She's not here,' he said miserably on the phone.  But several days later she stumbled up the driveway, wretched and scrawny in the soggiest Somerset winter in decades.  Husband was ecstatic.  For a month and a half he took care of her; worried about her when the wind howled, and watched anxiously as she clung to her tree-top boudoir through outrageous stormy nights.  

Foul Weather En-Route

     
     On my first morning back at the Pink Cottage, Husband leapt out of bed at dawn. 'Where are you going?' He looked at me like I was an idiot. 'To open the work-shed for Penny,' he answered.  The shed is huge.  You could park four cars in it. He'd been housing the bird indoors during the torrential rains.  I went out to see her.  She stood staring at me.  I heard a voice.  What the....?  I went closer.  'Well, as Wittgenstein said in Notes on Logic...' someone announced.  Penny's pea-head cocked as though she were listening closely. 

     
     'The bird is listening to Radio Four,' I said to Husband back in the house.  'She prefers it to music,' he responded. 

Shhhh... I'm Listening to
The Archers

     
     Later, Penny showed up at the back door. 'Could you give her some cheddar cheese,' Husband asked. I obediently went to the refrigerator and retrieved a chunk to break up for her. 'Not that one,' he said, 'the mild cheddar!  She doesn't like the mature.'   

Friend and Beastly at the Shore,
Happily Away from The Bird

      One day Friend showed up with Beastly the dog. 'Better keep that dog on leash,' I said as we watched Penny admire herself in one of the several strategically placed mirrors on the property, 'Penny's beak could puncture a hole in Beastly's skull.' Friend looked anxiously at the bird and plucked a candy colored tidbit from a bowl, popped it into her mouth. 'You just ate an insect nibble,' I told her.  

Mirror Mirror in the Hedge

     Husband kept careful care of the bird. Months passed, and then it happened again. She began to wander off, just like she had at the same time the previous year.  We realized it wasn't because she had found a better buffet elsewhere, but that it must have something to do with the season and the thickening foliage in her roost of choice.

A Boy and his Peahen

     


     We watched her waddle off one day.  'I had the strangest dream,' Husband said, 'I dreamed that I was at a carnival with Penny.  We were walking along like she was my pet dog or something.  We came to a stand manned by a Bird-Whisperer. The Bird-Whisperer held out his hand.  Penny went up to him and pecked out a message in his palm with her beak. The Bird-Whisperer turned to me.  She wants me to tell you something, he said.  She says,  'Tell him my name is Erica."' 

     'You dreamed that?' I said. Husband nodded.  Penny disappeared down the street. Maybe, I thought, it's not such a bad thing she's going. 

      'She'll be back,' Husband smiled and went back into the house.   

Springtime

  

Bye