hi honey, i'm back

It's so nice to take my walks in the morning.  The light is gorgeous, the air is cool, my fellow walkers are cheery, and the roses are as fresh and perfect as can be. Today I met two friendly kitties at the free figs house.  Friendly kitties are such a bonus.  I met one yesterday who wanted to follow me home.  Wish I COULD bring all the friendly kitties home, but the kitties we DO have don't think they get enough loving as it is. These morning walks are becoming a moveable feast.  Windfall pears and apples, low-hanging prunes, ripe blackberries!   Fennel, mint and lemon balm growing as weeds.  Lush and delicious August.  But autumn is pinching light off both ends of the day.  There's a poem in there.  I'll leave it alone and let it ripen for a while.

  I am thinking about how time has changed.   When I was working, it was sectioned into neatly defined, separately identified bits.   I knew the shape and size of 7:30 Tuesday morning, and where it fit into my day, my week, my life. Every minute interlocked with all the minutes surrounding it like distinct pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. I recognized ten AM without looking at a clock. My body could feel when it was 3:15.   Every day was distinct and unique. And colors - blue Monday, gray Wednesday, Carnival-colored Friday at five, drowsy brown Sunday afternoons in winter, every day and time had it’s own distinct hue and texture.   Thursday was nothing like Wednesday, and Saturday was not just a different animal, but an entirely different species. But since Covid, time has become amorphous; a pale beige, elastic blob like well-kneaded bread dough.  Morning stretches seamlessly into afternoon and I’m still in my bathrobe.  The days of the week are not Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, etc.  I

  2.2 miles on my virtual tour of the Great Ocean Road. I have made it to Lorne, and I want to stay at the grand Pacific Hotel. It's a vintage colonial style with lacey iron railings along the verandas making it look like Miss Havisham's wedding cake. And such views it has! If I were to stay there, I would also go have lunch at the Swing Bridge Cafe which has pictures of some awesome looking pub grub. Portobello mushroom grilled with two eggs inside and garnished with fried onions. YUM! One of the delightful things I have noticed about these ocean views is the magnificent cloudscapes. Giant fat squally thunderheads floating in a blue sky over a blue sea. Around here, clouds usually are more like layers of lint. But those Australian clouds are sculptural. There are rubicund goddesses lounging atop those pillowy mounds, and at the bottom, torrents of rain hammering remorselessly down on an ocean that can't be bothered to notice such nuisances. My walk would have been

  2.1 miles today. Yesterday was a lazy day. Breakfast and fun time with friends. Too hot to walk by the time we got home. Crows are molting. I found lots of feathers, which make wonderful cat toys. I wrote a poem about it a few years ago. Feather Found A-wing, aloft, a lift of breeze-borne light drifting down, a pinion loose and shaken free. How did it feel, molting your flight feather? Was there a ping of pain when it lost its socket, or did it slip away unnoticed? Are you lop-sided to your right? Do you miss this one fine device of many, or does the change whistle timely through your hollow bones?

Today, Breakfast with the Williams and knitting with MJ.  No walks.  Sunny warm, but not too hot. 75 at noon thirty.  Chris Herron likes my walking posts.

  Three miles today! I put Gatorade in my water bottle. wonder if that made half a mile difference?   Today I focused on sounds. Quite eye-opening. (ear opening?) Of course there was the persistent hum of distant traffic. We are under the flight path to the airport, and several jetliners droned overhead. In the distance, I heard a train whistle. Window air-conditioners whirred and rattled. It was after 8 am, so occasionally I heard hammering, and once the song of the law nmower was heard in the land. Children laughed in backyards. Birds- oh the birds! Chickens buck-bucketed. Crows brayed, cawed, croaked and urked. Starlings chittered. ( More than two is called a murmuration of starlings.) A woodpecker hammered on a telephone pole, which resounded wonderfully. Dogs barked. And then I heard something - I knew I had heard it before but never in a city. I followed my ears and found - - You're not going to believe this - - I mean, brace yourself. What would you expect in a beautiful sub