You've Given Me A Ya-Ya (Apologies To George Harrison)

I've got the Sunday bluesie blahs and I'm sitting here, sweating and stinking from a walk and don't feel like worshiping at any church today, not even the Church of Batshit Crazy, maybe more like drowning in the Church of Good God I Suck.
Who knows why these spells come upon us? I mean really. Sarah Palin has resigned as governor of Alaska and I can't even summon enough caring to wonder why.

We had a most laid-back Fourth. Mr. Moon got a new chain saw to replace the one the thieves purloined a few months ago and he spent the day trimming back a fence line next to our neighbor's where our trees were leaning on their sheds. He worked himself into an exhausted puddle of man and I did very little beyond trimming some of the Confederate jasmine which is pulling the fence over with its weight. That and some laundry and I took a nap.
I came alive somewhat in the early evening and we gave the chicks some watermelon which wasn't fit for human consumption as it had no flavor at all. The chickens didn't care. They loved it, both the hens and the biddies.
Here are the hens enjoying their fruit servings for the day:


And here are the babies:



Please note the size disparity between Elmira (at approximately eleven o'clock on the circle of chickens above) and the others. It is as if she has stuck at peep-size and I wonder if there is such a thing as a banzai chicken. Her little legs are like twigs compared to Henry's, the brown bird there whose legs are like stout saplings, the better to bear his prodigious weight. I do think he is a man bird. His comb is coming in red and thick. When we lift the roof of the young bird's pen, they try to escape and the day is coming soon when they shall be let out to fend with the big girls but I am afraid to let out Elmira because she is so small she will be able to simply walk out through the wire of the cage, making her easy prey for hawks and snakes.

Oh, dear Elmira! We have not kept you going this long to let a cousin bird have you for a meal!

Anyway, la-di-dah and so forth and I made a supper of venison backstrap and mashed butternut squash (I cooked the male one) with maple syrup and cinnamon and a salad some brown and wild rice.
And that was the Fourth of July.

On my walk this morning I saw that most of the butterfly peas, more formally known as Clitoria ternatea had finished blooming and I was mad at myself because I had wanted to get a picture but of course google images has a million of them. Here's one:


Well. There are no words needed for that little beautiful piece of flowerly deliciousness.
I have been thinking about flowers and their connection to the flower of the woman, if you will, because begonias seem to give us blooms that are similar too.


There is one of mine. Begonia's, that is.

On another day I would probably be able to spin something poetic and lovely concerning the comparison of a blossom with a woman but I am not poetic or lovely today. I am feeling sludgy and drudgy and full of self-loathing for no apparent reason. I haven't been off the property except to walk in days and days and we're out of milk and Hank called to see if I wanted to meet up with him and some of his crew at the flea market and I should. Not because I need any damn thing at all the flea market sells, but because I could hang out with the Hankster.
And yet, I feel no compulsion to get in my car and drive the miles there although I am listening to a book on CD in the car that is overdue and I'm enjoying it. It's Christopher Moore's A Dirty Job and if you haven't read it, I think it's a lot of fun and worth reading.


I am also about to finish up another book I'm listening to, this one on tape and it is a majestic recording of a very good book called Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. This one I have been listening to through countless bouts of weeding, walking, trimming and sweeping. I am going to be so sad when I'm done although the library would like it back now, please.

And with my eyes (thank you, May) I am reading Wally Lamb's The Hour I First Believed and I wish I hadn't read it yet but instead, had it packed away for Mexico. I need to get out and buy some books to take with me to Mexico because I plan on letting myself fall into reading there, great gulps of reading of books I hold in my hand, lying beside the ocean, or in my bed.
Any suggestions?
No teen-aged vampires or post-atomic blast dystopia, please.

And so it goes and I need to shower and decide what I'm doing today besides feeling inadequate in every way, and overwhelmed by the simplest tasks.

Summer has peaked, it seems to me. The blackberries are not worth the effort at this point, the garden is at a place where things are either not ready or done.

I feel the same.

I am neither ready nor done and I am not sure for what in either case but today is a day of feeling set quite solidly in the middle of nothingness and not willing to make the effort to pull myself out of this brackish river which is not flowing at all, just still and between tides, not chilly or hot, perhaps the exact temperature as the air and my body, and I feel as if I am floating here, looking up at the sky which doesn't even have a cloud floating past to give me any sense of movement whatsoever.

And I suppose that's okay. I can rest with my flowers and the swamp mallow is blooming in the woods and the giant begonia has no bloom at all, just huge leaves which are enough, plenty enough, and I am wondering if that track I saw on the dirt road was gator track and the day proceeds, even if I can not feel it.