Everyone’s gone to the moon

Walking through a Westside neighborhood today I imagined how it might look to a Martian landing on any of the front lawns (now that we know there was once water on Mars it is easier to imagine that there are also little Martians traveling around the universe and beyond in their little oblong space ships). They’d see a street resembling a ghost town. Not a sign of life. Silence from within. If I were that Martian, upon witnessing such silence and emptiness I’d hightail it out of here. Surely some chemical toxins have either wiped out 100% of the population or at the very least forced everyone indoors? For safety’s sake, I’d close the door to my spaceship and flee!.

Of course, there are no toxins, there was no chemical spill, no bombs exploded wiping out the population. It was just a gorgeously bright and sunny Sunday in Spring and everyone was locked indoors, creating an outdoor sense of desolate emptiness and betrayal. What Martian would want to pause and be part of that? Sometimes I just hate the suburbs.


P.S. I do want to exempt one tiny portion of my block from this: where the flamingos once somersaulted in the winter (see February post), there are now plastic chairs, wheelbarrows and toys. The family across the street brings life right onto the front lawn and their magnetic draw attracts others. Our block is thus spared the ghost-town imagery. As I worked clearing the plant beds of winter debris out front today, I felt that a Martian would feel okay on our block.

The Spring anti-update

Realty sets in as I watch the following plants proliferate at an alarming pace: dandelions, violets, and defiant lamium (which took over an entire area prepped for a new flower border and now will not leave).

I feel noble and virtuous with my resistance to chemicals in the yard. I fertilize with organic turkey droppings – how cool is that –and I pull out (no exaggeration here) hundreds of dandelions by hand, one by one, so that they don’t completely control the yard. But lamium has stumped me. Thus I get a deep thrill when I come across a container of Round Up weed killer at Menard’s. I study the toxic ingredients with something verging on lust and I tell myself that there'll be one more year of waging war against the lamium and after that I’ll cave in: late at night, when no one is watching, I’ll point and spray and watch the noxious foam do its dirty work, seeping into the leaves of each and every one of these little bastards.

As for the violets: never has something that looks so pretty in June turned into such a menace for all the months after. I'll cut off the flowers and throw them in salads and basically resign myself to their spreading habit. Taste and beauty sometimes win over orderliness.

So are we down to four now?

The NYT today provides an assessment of the four most likely Kerry running mates: Edwards (+charisma, but he wont even deliver NCarolina), Gebhardt (+everyone likes Gebhardt, but he’s old news), Vilsack (+swing state Midwesterner, but no foreign policy credentials), Richardson (+ swing state and foreign policy on his side, but has never run for office before).

Of course, those who have seen the spiciness of the primaries wither and become an endless dusty road with no sign of anything more titillating than Kerry’s shoulder surgery may still be holding out hope for McCain. So what that he doesn’t want the job, doesn’t want to cross party lines, doesn’t want to be anyone’s running mate? It is said that if he got on board it would be a sure win for Kerry. You’d think that would be tough to pass up if you were as dis-enamored with GWB as McCain is.

Spring Ahead

Had I remembered that clocks leap forward today, I would not have turned off the computer at 1:30 (meaning 2:30) last night, especially since a visitor is stopping by in an hour and so an early wake-up was essential.


All this is rather trivial, but I did want to note that waking up has not been a problem recently because of the unfortunate bird issue. I don’t mean “birds singing” either. Birds have been flying into our windows at an alarming rate this year. There have always been a few confused souls in the past who have done this. Usually the birds fall to the ground in a state of shock and if I am around, I will either keep an eye on them or move them, just to make sure the vicious neighborhood cats don’t get to them before the little guys get over their shock and can fly again.

But there have been so many lately that I wonder if it isn’t like the “frogs stopped singing in the Amazon” phenomenon (i.e. a sign of disastrous environmental changes that have caused a weakened species). So, I’m up, listening for the next thud and wondering whether I should paint temporary orange stripes on the windows, at least until the bird population gets its seasonal strength again.