The carpenter bees are out, as are the bee traps. Already we’ve captured a half-a-dozen or so bees. The kittens are mesmerized, watching bees buzz around, tumbling on top of each other.
Being their first spring, Harry and Wilhelmina are taken with the billion “mosquito hawks” swarming. Both kittens twirl and pirouette through the air trying to catch bugs. Sam and I sit on the porch drinking our coffee and enjoying our personal yard circus.
The winter hasn’t been harsh, and yet sprigs of green, daffodils, forsythia, flowering pears and lorapetalum fuchsia blooms are like receiving a long-awaited gift.
One day I saw Margaret Triplett at the church decorating for Palm Sunday. The week between Palm Sunday and Easter, called Holy Week, is one of my absolute favorites — maybe more so than Christmas. There’s a whole lot of wonder packed into one week.
Margaret has taken some palmetto reeds and fashioned them into crosses; then she added purple ribbons and attached them to the doors of the white picturesque chapel. I took photographs on my phone; they were so beautiful I thought they should be made into some kind of Easter greeting card.
I look forward to the Palm Sunday church service. The young boys and girls form a parade down the aisle, waving their palm leaves. Without fail the little girls wearing their pretty spring dresses wave their palm leaves daintily while the little boys swing their palm leaves like swords on other boys’ heads. The children are delightful, but boys will be boys.
When I lived in the Sessums community I would compete with Nell Sciple to get my hummingbird feeders out. Even though she was my nearest neighbor, a half-a-mile away, we raced to be the first to welcome hummingbirds. Here at the Prairie house I hung my feeders out over the weekend and wondered if Nell had put hers out. I haven’t seen a hummingbird yet, but I’m sure it won’t be long.
There was a time when the thought of seeing a snake would cause me great anxiety. Nowadays I don’t care for them, but neither do I find it so upsetting. So when I encountered my first one this year, it wasn’t alarming. My concern was more for the unwary kittens.
The sneaky snake was lying beside the front door, attempting to enter a small opening outside the doorjamb. I opened the door and walked through, with Harry following. I stepped back out to coax Wilhelmina inside and only then spotted the snake.
Grabbing Wilhelmina and running to the back door, I pitched her inside and grabbed the gun. In that short period of time the snake had slipped on through the hole.
When Sam arrived I pointed out where I had seen the snake and shared my plan. Sam said, “Don’t shoot what you can’t see.”
“Oh, I could see him alright, not his head but his body.”
Secretly I was only slightly concerned about shooting the doorjamb.
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