TUESDAY, 29 OCTOBER
In addition to this pile of brush, at this time we had
13 black trash bags and three wheelie bins full of debris.
We used this opportunity to rake out the entire back yard;
I'd been leaving leaf litter under the bushes for the BROWN THRASHERS,
but as they seem to prefer the feeder ("killing" the seeds as tho they were insects),
I decided to clean it all out and keep it that way.
ODE TO A FENCE: HOW DO WE LOVE THEE?
(with apologies to Elizabeth Barrett Browning)
We love thee for PRIVACY: no one can see us when we swim.
We love thee for SAFETY: no coyotes or alligators can come into the yard.
We love thee for more PRIVACY; the entire back of the house is sliders;
the Library, the Kitchen, the Fireplace Room & my Bedroom are all visible,
to neighbors and passersby.
We love thee for SECURITY; we realize someone could climb thee if s/he wanted to,
but thee makes it a bit more difficult to do so.
We love thee for AESTHETICS, even tho thee was old & decrepit
and finally succumbed to the elements.
Our tree-hating neighbor and his wife
helped us cut up all the fence pieces with his SAWSALL,
making it easier to take it all to the curb.
He probably assumed the quicker the fence came down,
the quicker we'd put up a new one. Probably not until 2025.
A few days later, he dumped several cut-up pieces on Poor Philomena,
who had been starting to recover.
Scavengers came to take away some of the wood, presumably to burn.
As we don't know if the wood was treated (sometimes with arsenic),
we didn't plan to use it for our fireplace.
However, they did leave a mess,
with some of the pieces tossed in the street.
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