Beyond Belief dep't.

A lengthy Saturday. And the end of a lengthy week with more than its share of aggravations. But they came alongside great compensations, and we're all still here and kicking.

Prairie Metropolis had its early-May blizzard in Tuesday. Monday--rain, v. welcome in itself, but Monday night it turned chilly with strong NW winds and then a screaming snowstorm: heavy when I woke up, and got steadily more IGNORANT through the morning.

Fortunately Harriet-the-Echo was still wearing her snow tires...got out of my driveway all right after I cancelled the cross-town meeting scheduled for early morning, off to St. Curious to work on preparations for Big Deal Fundraising Banquet on Thursday.

Meantime, Distrait Neighbour still lurking in ancient family van in the backyard as mentioned in previous post.

But when I came home Tuesday late afternoon, there was a surplus of tire tracks in the deep driveway snow, and I thought, "Ah! he has taken his van and gone away, excellent."

Alas, too many tire tracks. He had taken van out, brought van back, and instead of returning it to its previous nice dry nesting place aligned with the driveway...he had driven it into the deep snow in the middle of the yard and gotten it most well and truly stuck...and in its stuck state, he was attempting to change one or more tires.

Over Wednesday and Thursday , to my increasing distress and dismay, he continued to try to extricate it. And of course, when you're stuck, the Preferred Method is just to tramp mindlessly on the gas, right? And go on flinging grass and mud from under your wheels until you've gotten right down into the root systems of the Nine Poplars (major feature of the backyard at Tether's End, aka "The Unpleasaunce"). And until you've run out of gas.

But in the meantime -- an unexpected visit to Prairie Metropolis by Brother #3...nice meals together and lots of good talk.

And in the meantime, increasingly happy preparations with Fab Rector for the fundraising banquet, much assisted by Amazin' Secketry who clustered and organized masses of Unbelievable Donated Tat into Exquisite Gift packages for the silent auction. Joyful grace note: disposal of six, count'em, six superfluous baskets out of the Rambler pantry as containers for Exquisite Gift packs.

And the dinner itself was delightful. Every aspect was exceptional, and early in the proceedings there was a kind of corporate "click," a "tipping moment," where you could just feel the whole group deciding "RIGHT! This is now officially a Good Time, let'er rip!!!" Great food, great company, great MC, super-great guest speaker.

And the pre-prandial martini didn't hurt either, yum. The Excellent Elderly Ladies of St. Curious rejoiced that their very favourite expert martinist was on duty at the bar that night. "There is something about a martini," as Ogden Nash wrote, "...and to tell you the truth, it's not the vermouth. I think that perhaps it's the gin."

So that it was not too troubling, coming home on Thursday night, to find large clots of loose mud in the driveway (snow had meantime pretty much melted)...and the van gone...and the fence stove in, the picnic table shattered, and one of the garbage cans flattened and its contents strewn far and wide.

Friday evening and this morning, was back at St. Curious working on the Compost Project. Much much joy -- a big group working, Excellent Elderly Ladies sitting in a row of lawn chairs unfolding and opening black plastic bags; all and sundry shovelling compost from the giant heap into the measuring bins and bagging the contents and wheelbarrowing the bags to and fro. There was coffee, there was baking, there were dogs, all the jokes were funny and the weather was fine...we even had customers!!!

Excellent Son Units and Wondrous Grandson came together this afternoon and did a good deal of raking and shovelling and power-washing flung mud off the fences and the back of the house. Grass-seed is #1 on Monday's list of to-do's.

And I've dug the first dig-up of my front flower bed, preparatory, eventually, to a massive sowing of poppy seeds.

And the Rambler's tulips are in glorious bloom...

And tomorrow is also a day.

life is good

...or at least, it has very good moments.

A baptismal interview this morning, and then rehearsal for the two families with little people to be baptized tomorrow morning...

While I was waiting for them to arrive (one of the moms was actually conducting a stamping and card-making workshop downstairs)(that's stamping as in "rubber stamping" not "rubber boot stamping" you understand)...a parishioner dropped by with a poem.

We likes poems, my precious.

All Souls' Morning

Rain splatting wet leaves; citrine light; the cat
Scratching the sofa; the house dead quiet but for
The furnace thumping in the cellar; that man, my
Neighbor, out on Locust Road as he is each morning
No matter the weather, walking his dog--bent shoulders
And heavy head, cherry-red leash dangling from a
Pale hand, his dog the dark tan of oak leaves when
They turn and hang and enter the depths of winter. I see
A huge patience in his stoop, in the ghostly cigarette
Limp between his lips, in the stiff tilt of his head,
The treadle action of his passage, the orange surprise
Of a golf umbrella blossoming from his fist, the loll
Of the dog by his side as they return up Locust, both
Eater to be in again out of the cold wet day that's
Breaking round them. I'm thinking how, bound to
One another, they've been at this for years,
When my father comes leaning, as he always did,
Up Clareville Road, not far from where he's buried,
Bent against the bitter wind that always tunnelled it
In winter, his black umbrella furled, our small
Black mongrel, Brandy, straining the leash toward home
Where my mother fusses the tea together. Five o'clock
And Dublin's dark already, it being winter, fat raindrops
Scudding the wind and mixing with his lost thoughts
As he hastens after his dog, home to the wife who, when he
Leaves her behind him, will run aground with grief
At being no one in the world. This is the bottom line,
I guess: we button our habits to the chin and set out
Walking very fast with death. A bluejay's screech
Rattles the skeleton of our locust tree; the road
Outside my window is empty again, and rain gives way
To sky-bright weather, gray aquarium light making
Luminous the air, coating the dark tar with mirror-pools
Of periwinkle blue. A rising wind tides among the
Surviving leaves, and a swallow flock of dead ones
Joyrides down Locust Road, cold no more, borne off. All
Night, you said, when we wakened warm by one another,
I was seeing shapes widen round the room, hearing them
Whisper in the wall. This minute my hungry children are
Clattering to the kitchen for breakfast. The house quickens.

--Eamon Grennan.