My Peugeot bicycle:

 

My Peugeot bicycle

This afternoon (I know, you are suppose to pick herbs early in the morning, but I am usually engaged in other pursuits at that time) I picked a lot of basil and now, after rinsing it and removing the chaff and extraneous material, will dry it. But to do so I realized I needed to move the empty wine bottles from an outside shelf to accommodate the drying trays. So, I moved the bottles, after making sure they were really empty, to the re-cycling bin which is located in what we still refer to as the wood shed (Back in the seventies when we heated the house with wood this building was filled annually with several cords of split fir, tamarack and pine, perhaps some oak if we were lucky.) Anyway, there was my1970 Peugeot bicycle, dusty, flabbergasted, and flat-tired, brake pads dry as a crone’s cracked lips and looking like something only a mother or father could love, not something that had once graced with eloquence and pride the nation’s velodromes. And there was the mileage meter I had attached to the front wheel almost sixty years ago. A meter that had recorded I don’t know how many thousands of miles, almost all accumulated from riding my bike to and from work for ten or so years. Such memories! We were poor by almost anyones method of measure and yet I had convinced my wife to let me buy it. Rode it for many years, even after we had moved to Oregon and if I wasn’t quite as old as I am now I would be riding it still.

Death of a Despot

 Death of a Despot

It’s March 30, 2026 and I’m sitting on my back porch, despite temperatures in the low forties, contemplating a glass of Sauvignon Blanc and an intensely blue blur of Anemone blanda blooming in a nearby garden bed. Our hummingbird feeder, hanging only a few feet away, hums intermittently with visits from the Anna’s Hummingbird, or is it a Rufous? But, something is missing; something is askew. The birds fly in and feed sporadically, displaying a certain sense of nervousness, looking over both shoulders as they feed. Gradually it dawned on me as to what was missing - it’s the villain, the scoundrel, the domineering despot who has ruled my artificial feeders with his (discerning) eye and sharp titanium beak for at least two years. The birds are still nervous while feeding but none have been attacked by any other hummingbirds - so far. Is that dominant alpha male of the last two or three years, the one that terrorized the feeders, dead? Is it perhaps too early to join the Munchkins and join them singing about the passing of the wicked hummingwarlockbird? “Ding-Dong the warlock’s dead, wake up, wake up you sleepy heads. Or, will a new emperor, king, president, dictator, etc. rise from the feathered ashes, with or without a ruby throat?