The Summer of the Garden Spider

Outside my window, the skies are gray. All the recent rains have turned my yard into a jungle, and the crepe myrtle tree blooms to near its full potential.

The garden spider that took up housekeeping against my storm door bounces in fury at my approach, while his cousins hang casually in finely crafted webs nearby.

Blackberry vines cover the mound in thorny glory, their rich black fruit come and gone until another season, as the wild blueberry just begins to ripen, and the muscadine promises a bounty yet to come.

It’s the end of July, and August looms just around the corner. The drenched summer is flying by as quickly as the bee that buzzes past my window.

Soon the greenery will give way to red and gold leaves, and the banks will be filled with bright yellow fall flowers. An evening chill will replace the humid air, and the garden spiders will fade away into the sunset.

After the Storm

I stood at the edge of Lake Erie at the end of my dirt road and thought about fishing poles and egrets. I’d asked Mary Elizabeth if she thought we should go to Walmart and buy some of those fish out of the aquariums. We could drop ‘em in the mud puddle that rivaled the great lakes, and fashion us up a cane pole. She indignantly replied that those fish were pets, and they were not for eating.

With a sigh of contrition, I gave up fantasies of deep fried glow fish, and remembered I still had a six inch melt from the Subway in my refrigerator.

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Old houses make me sad. Abandoned, and often overgrown with vines and thickets, they stand sentinel to the past. They hold their secrets jealously while seeming to mourn the long gone families that once inhabited them.

The county that I live in is sparsely populated, and many dirt roads still ramble through the countryside. I’ve traveled many of those roads, and run across these derelict homes.

Their gaping windows and sagging doors beckon to me, daring me to discover the barrenness they now enclose.

I ache to know their history. I wonder who originally owned them, and whatever became of them.

I long to step over their thresholds and peer into every corner, searching for some hint of what once was. But alas, being that I am but a trespasser, I wistfully stand at the boundary, and bid them my own farewell.

photos courtesy
Robbie Wright

Scene Out My Window

Late evening and the bluejays are active. The sun has played musical chairs with the clouds today.

Out on the old sand mound, a black cat naps lazily between the blackberry vines. Soon twilight will fall, and perhaps he will go on the prowl for some poor, hapless field mouse.

Humidity hangs in the air like a wet blanket, and the trees seem still until I glance to the top and notice a little stirring in the branches.

The turkey oaks never seem to fare well in the brutal August heat. Spring’s green shimmer fades from their leaves and turns them brown around the edges.

I watch as a lone bird swoops through the oaks and disappears into the woods beyond. And as I drop the curtain on the scene out my window and another day, I imagine she’ll find a place to roost through the long night ahead.

courtesy
Robbie Wright