Sunday Promenade

As through this life you travel, you'll meet some funny men,
Some rob you with a six-gun, some with a fountain pen.
As through this life you travel, as through this life you roam,
You'll never see an outlaw drive a family from its home.

Woody Guthrie
Song: Pretty Boy Floyd

It was cool at the cabin this morning. The wife said she checked the thermometer around 6:30 and it was around the freezing mark. Hey, this is Wisconsin in May.

Gramma used to say "You don't plant your tomatoes until after Memorial Day." Of course, she was talking about the old, inconvenient Memorial Day of May 31 -- the one where people understood why the day was set aside. Not to be confused with the three-day-weekend convenient Memorial Day we've had for the past 30 or so years. A cellar for of her canned fruits and vegetables and a large, successful garden every year stamped her in my mind as an authority on the subject.

I took a little road cruise into town mid-morning a pickup a Sunday paper and swung by the hardware store for a couple of screws to fix my lawnmower. I took the round-about way home going passed a couple little lakes and crossing over the Willow River. Where the town road cuts between to small ponds, I could see a pair of Canadian Geese on the road. Slowing to a stop, I could see the geese herding their babies into the danger mode. I creeped my car up along side them, as they scurried down the bank into the water. The male was first in the water, he turned and faced me with a honk that meant business should I challenge the group. Mother goose and the babies scrambled somewhat orderly into the pond and swam determinedly away. Father goose held his ground -- rather water -- and kept on quacking.

I don't see many geese flying this time of year, but I do see pairs of them with babies in tow down by the lake out back. Recently, a large male fox hanging around. If this year is like past years, a bald eagle will soon be hanging out in the big tree down by the lake. Baby geese draw a crowd of others with their own babies to feed. Over the past 18 years on these five acres, I've learned to appreciated the annual patterns and notice the cycles and trends that happen over time: coyotes come and they go; foxes do to; rabbits are everywhere and then disappear; gophers invade and badgers follow.