the fall crab

Last night Isis joined us upstairs. It has taken him six months to be successful in establishing himself as a permanent part-time resident at the farmhouse. (There is no litter box and no kittie door, hence the "part time" nature of the enterprise,.)

Wait a minute, has it really been six months since I moved to the farmhouse? Almost. This Thursday celebrates the sixes: six months since the move, six years since I met and started hanging out with Ed and it is, too his 61st birthday.

How he hates that I remind him of it! (Ed has a small set of strong negative feelings and in that set you’ll find his feelings about celebrations, especially as they pertain to him.)

But let me not jump ahead. For now I’m thinking about how pretty it is outside the farmhouse. How every morning, our crab apples, studded with red fruits, are the feeding station for these guys:





I know that if you live in a place where you hate some detail of your environment, that feeling of dissatisfaction eventually passes. You get used to most anything: ugly carpets, miserable wall paper -- it all becomes background noise. So I wonder: does beauty become background noise as well? Or is it that I will always step out in the morning, see the same birds against the fall crab apple and think -- wow.