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Back To The Land of......

© Barbara Hall

The leaves that fall at the feet of the trees on whom they used to flutter, carry on endless conversations with the sky. I never realized that before.

But I have a new observation post, which feeds into my apologies for being so VERY long between articles. My experiment of living in an apartment of an albeit SMALL city wasn't very conducive to weedy ponderings.

A magnificent willow, one of the most striking presences in the area, was destroyed to "Put Up A Parking Lot" (that I actually DID write about) .....said parking lot was torn up, roped off and rendered inaccessible for the entire winter. Last spring it was PAVED and immediately became Dog-Walking Central and when the Tuesday NOISE of the mowers and blowers (which were only barely tolerable because of the scent of cut grass) released the scent of more dog-'droppings' than grass, I realized I was shutting down.

Although I lived across the street from an impressive waterfall, the most amusing part of THAT was watching the occasional COUCH go over the falls and get hung up in the creek for weeks on end, looking like it was waiting for some mid-stream fisherman. I wonder where they all went.

There was the 4:30am street sweeper, intent on sucking up the very BLACKTOP that would have me scraping myself off the ceiling early in the mornings, the generosity of the Radio-Blasting Car Jockies who could have SWORN we all asked to hear 'that one', and the occasional screaming match in front of the bar on the corner. And don't get me STARTED on the landlord. In spite of my BEGGING for nothing more than WARNING, I was treated to THREE sneak-applications of polyurethane in adjacent apartmens that left me with chest-pains, loss of balance and numb fingertips and sent me scrambling for a safe place to spend those nights. A real chapter THIS was....

There's nothing like CONTRAST to get one's attention. I am now back in a BARN. I drive past a goat, and pig and a bunch of chickens when I come in the road (and they NEVER play the radio real loud). Here in my large studio apt on the second floor,I have just three windows, shoulder-to-shoulder that look through a plum tree, across a small lawn and STRAIGHT into the woods.....which is where I watch those conversations the fallen leaves have with the sky. And you thought they only change color ON the trees.....incredible.

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