It’s time to talk about the tiny garden on the north fence. It was created to give the Chinquapin oak more fertile ground in which to thrive. All seems to be going well. The upright rosemary is having a hard time, but most everyone else is doing fine. I have noticed something odd, however, and it has to do with the plant I like to call a Yellow Bells.

It’s time to mow the tall grass on the back lots. In fact, I should have mowed it sooner, before it went to seed. Now it’s tall and brown, perfect fodder for fire. I need to knock it down, so that rain when it comes can help it begin to decompose and make its way back into the earth. And I want to expose the Bluebonnet seeds for next season. But mowing the tall grass is hot dusty work on a zero-turn mower. A tractor with a seat high above the fray would be better.

I have a nice flashlight that I can quickly shift from wide to narrow beam. I try to keep it handy for my nighttime forays into the yard at 3 a.m. looking for deer and varmints and anything else that might poke its head up. But I couldn’t find it last night, and I didn’t know why. It was a puzzle because there aren’t that many places where I leave it after my nighttime adventures. I went back to bed, a little sad.

The ritual cleaning for company came to me courtesy of my late wife. The notice of coming guests triggered, depending upon the season, a spate of yard work to prepare the lawns and gardens, followed by the cleaning and organizing of the interior. Nothing could be left to chance. We dusted, we vacuumed, we wiped things down. Primarily, I was the keeper of the exterior, but military service and being the oldest son of a mother of four boys who thought her sons needed to do chores, uniquely qualified me for interior cleaning as well.

Well, my gray day yesterday lasted about as long as it took me to write about it, eat breakfast, and start my yard work. I mowed and edged and looked at my flowers. All four of my sage are in bloom, and it’s a heavy bloom, which is a real treat because they’re all at least six to seven feet tall and nearly that big around. For a subtle touch, the Ironweed my son planted is also blooming. But you have to look for it. It’s in the shade.

Durn. An unexpected grayness has settled over me. I’m not sure what to make of it. As I said, it’s unexpected. I had what passes for a good night’s sleep. Most likely, it is a valley between the excitement of doing one thing and the coming of anticipation for the next. The existence of those twin peaks tends to make what comes between seem empty. Although, when I’m in a gray day it colors everything. So, it’s hard to tell. Sometimes it’s merely a day that sneaks up on me.

It’s an odd thing to have a video with a million views, which I now do. It’s a platinum video. It was posted on a page I run called Gatewood Press, on Facebook. It was about flooding just down river from the town where I live. It showed a site before the flood and during the flood and there wasn’t a lot of time between the two. There was nothing then there was something, and a lot of it. Water

Fulfillment. My mower is back up and running. I replaced the flat idler pulley and installed a new belt. We’re not done yet. I still need to replace the bearings in one of the spindle assemblies. There’s a wobble and the blade cuts unevenly. I needed professional advice, however, before undertaking the task. I got it. And I think I can do it. I just need to take my time and use the air driven impact wrench.

When I built my workroom, I asked that all the locks be keyed to the same key. Then I forgot that request. Which explains why, ten or so years down the road, I stumbled upon a cup full of keys with only the vaguest idea as to what they might unlock. Then I remembered the workroom. So, yesterday I spent a good portion of the day testing all those keys and reworking seldom-used locks. I’m trying to get back into the habit of locking things up when I leave the house. Not something I like to do, but it’s the prudent thing to do.

It never ceases to amaze me how little I know, especially when it comes to digital technology, a field in which I assiduously have tried to keep up because I felt it was key to surviving in a changing business climate. I learned HTML, Basic, a large number of software packages, the Pick operating system, and anything else that would help further my education or my career. But this week I hit another void in my learning.

Spent most of Thursday driving around looking at the river. My river. The Pedernales. It runs through town, under highway 281. A powerful amount of rain fell west around Fredericksburg and gathered itself to run down the foothills of the Llano Uplift into the river. In Fredericksburg, the river crested at 34 feet. It spread out and lost steam as it got to slightly flatter ground. But it still rose to 25 feet in Johnson City.

It’s a gray day in the country. I’ve had a day and night of slow and steady rain. So, far one inch has fallen. I hear tell more is on the way. I’ll let the rain gauge run until the event is done, whenever that might be. There’s a chance of showers all the way through Friday. This is going to be an oddly cool July methinks.

My small-town life has closed in around me once again. The party is over. The kids are off to their lives. Friends off to theirs. It’s me and the house and the cats, and the latter is company of the vaguest sort. It’s times like this when, if you had a partner and lost them, you miss them once again because there would be a recap to ease the transition. But that’s definitely water under the bridge, although not that much. In three weeks, it will be six years since my wife died. Sometimes it feels like forever and sometimes it feels like yesterday.

I’m having post-birthday thoughts. By most metrics, I’ve had a long life. I’m five years past the lifespan of the average US male, and one year away from how long most US women live. Mostly I think it’s luck and genetics. In fact, it’s probably all luck and genetics. I didn’t pick my parents, and I can recall two instances where death nearly came knocking but turned away. Both involved cars, and both were in my relative youth.

On the occasion of my eightieth birthday yesterday I had one of those revelations that sometimes visits me and helps bring my life into sharper focus. In this case it had to do with friends and how I view them. Previously, I’ve seen my life as a journey across the landscape of time, picking up friends along the way and losing some too. There was always this idea of having left something behind.

It’s sticker burr season. I think mine are sentient. I know the common ways they get into the house. Pants. Socks. Shoes. Pets. But we have no indoor pets, and I’ve found so many recently in the house that mine have to be traveling on their own. It’s either that or I’m being inordinately careless when it comes to my shoes and socks. I’m going with smart burrs.

I thought I was getting a new phone yesterday. I thought wrong. The phone was ordered in Houston. I was to pick it up at a local store just down the road. I arrived. It was there. The clerk scanned my ID and went to clicking on the computer. At the end, came the message to call home. He called. He talked. He handed me the phone. I talked. Then I was told I couldn’t have the phone, the transaction was flagged.

I’ve found myself sitting a bit too much lately, and I think it might be contributing to some of my back issues. I’m taking steps to rectify the situation. A friend’s daughter is helping me find a physical therapist, and I already have a good massage therapist. Now I just need to be my own get-up-and-go therapist and get moving. It also occurred to me, however, that in addition to dealing with an aging body, I might also be wrestling with a mild depression.

It may seem odd, but I’ve loved all the places I’ve ever lived. East to west, north to south, any place I’ve ever called home always brought something to the table. I imagine part of the reason for this is that I never heard my parents complain, although there is a chance I wasn’t listening. After all, for most of it, I was a child, just happy to be. The bottom line, however, is still the same. I remember my surroundings with fondness.

Yesterday, I was sitting on a patio listening to music surrounded by people, most of whom I knew and most of whom I’d only come to know in the last twenty years or so. There was not a single person in the audience that I had known prior to 2004, yet many of them are well on the way to becoming close, personal friends. And I had the odd thought that if a potted plant were sentient this must be how it feels to find yourself in a new garden in the fresh soil of new friendships.

But last night, as I lay in bed and the wine wore off, I revised the analogy because life is more like a river and I’m a stone tumbling along driven by chance and circumstance. There was the luck of my birth, my father’s move back to Texas, the discovery of my future wife in downtown Houston, and the chance party where I met the musician I saw yesterday. In every case I paused long enough to gather the moss of friendships on my downstream side before being pushed on down the channel.

Although, at this point, I think I’m in calm enough water that I doubt I’ll get much further down the stream. I’m probably too heavy and the river’s lost interest. But that’s okay. Lots of people and pieces of my past lives are still with me, and this place and time is invigorating. These fourscore years have brought me much happiness, and if my past experience is any indicator the future portends well, and I am anxious to see it come.