Train, Train

I don't think I've ever posted a video of the train that runs in my back yard. And you can't really see the train in this video which I just made a few hours ago because it's summer and there is so much growth on the little strip of woods between our yard and the railroad track. 

However, if you turn your volume up to max, you will get an idea of what I hear several times a day. It's...well, it can be startling even now, twenty-two years after we moved here. I never hear it at night when we're in bed though. I sleep right through it. It's loud enough though for the house to shake a little, for windows to rattle. 
It's sort of crazy. 
What I didn't catch on the video is the added fun of the sound of the train horn as it approaches the crossing which is just a few yards past where our old barn is. And honey, that is LOUD! Sometimes Maurice and I jump when we hear it. I don't think you ever get used to that part. 

Today has been laid back. It's tried to rain several times over the course of the day and succeeded only for short periods of time with very little water involved. The first little storm came when I was working in the bed beside the library and kitchen on the west side of the house, pulling the never-ending deeply rooted monkey grass (lariope), many-bulbed crocosmia, and chenille plant that seems to just grow with some sort of ground-gripping ability that I doubt even science has yet to explain. It is slow and dirty and hot work. So I get a little bit done and then come back into the house to recover. I came in earlier than I would have due to the rain we were getting but by the time I'd cleaned up and changed into dry clothes, it had stopped raining and the sky was blue. 
Oh well. 
Mr. Moon, meanwhile, cut up what we've been calling "the tree" in the bed beside the fence which of course was a limb but a limb as big or bigger than many trees. He not only cut it up, he hauled it all to the burn pile. So that bed is now available for possible caladium preparation if I indeed do plant caladiums. 
We shall see. 

I did some ironing, mostly to give myself an excuse to watch more of "The Bear." It's funny how some of what started out seeming like minor characters are now some of my favorites. Their stories have been expanded, their parts have grown, and every one of them is blowing me away with their performances. 
This man, whose character name is Richie, played by Ebon Moss Bachrach, can communicate more with his face in two seconds than most actors could do in five pages of dialogue. 

He's brilliant. That's all there is to it. 
I remember once when I was in a short film made by a guy I knew, a director named Freddie Rabbath, and I was in a scene with a man who was actually an actor who taught me so much in less than one minute of reacting to one of my lines. He pulled me right into his face which revealed all of his emotions with such genuine belief it allowed me to give my own in return. He evoked mine with his. 
I'll never forget that. It was one moment of pure magic. 
I miss those days. 
Sigh. 
I am astonished/not astonished that Trump is calling for flags to fly at half-mast for Dolly for an entire week. Either he has absolutely no idea what she stood for and what she was trying to do in this world or else he is just playing the political card, realizing that everyone in the whole world loved her, and in showing some respect to her and honoring her, no matter how fake it might be, he'll be doing himself a major political favor. Possibly both of those things. 
Probably both of those things. I doubt he has the slightest clue as to why she was so loved. She was the opposite of everything he is and that's all there is to it. He's just too stupid to understand that. 

And that's enough from me tonight. 

Love...Ms. Moon