Zero Day

Zero day.  I don't mean nothing happened.  Appalachian Trail through-hikers sometimes visit us as they pass through this area and refer to their stays with us as zero days.  Likewise, runners have zero days.  If they're like me, they often glance through the glass, half-wishing they were traipsing a mountain trail.  Our back windows offered choice views of Elk Creek turbulence, following the robust rains of yesterday. No champion kayaker here, the moment wasn't wasted.

Instead, I turned to a January deadline.  I also worked on the song sheets I'm preparing for the Monster Concert Holiday Singalong on December 15, when four pianists on four pianos will accompany a roomful of winter warblers.  After years of soloing with party guests, it will be fun for pianists to party, too.

By the way, our winter wheat is coming up nicely, despite a few interrupted attacks by chickens who, before we clipped their wings, sailed right in, and afterward crossed droopy fences felled by strong winds.  I'm developing a habit of circling the two garden beds with a stapler to make repairs.

"How about the greenhouse garden you planted yesterday?" asks Virginia.

She knows me too well.  Of course, I checked it even though 24 hours is too soon for sprouts.  Good gardeners do things like that, to stay on top of troubles.  Yesterday's overwhelming smell of ammonia, from recent goat and donkey deposits in the compost bin, had dissipated. 

Some days I enter your aura expecting
invaders, fingers itching for a fight,
other times on the verge of surrender
to the villain I will challenge
through the end of my time, blaming you
before I remember it is like exercise,
showering, brushing teeth, trimming fingernails,
to me endless as the end comes nearer.

I kick myself. "Don’t be a fool."
What are you and I, but an endless
cycle of same-ness, if we so choose?
No, I refuse, we are much, much more.
I brush my teeth and clip my nails
because tomorrows are different.
Let another crowd take euthanasia;
we shall insist on life support.

--from "Conversations with a Garden"