HILLSPEAKING
from The Anglican Digest
PENTECOST A.D. 2006
LET ME paint you a Hillspeak picture. The frame will be the
kitchen window in Miss
Vinnie’s Cottage where I take most of my meals.
In the foreground will be the red bud tree Patient Wife and I
planted several years ago. Red buds are
among the very first to bloom in early spring; among the very last to
lose
their leaves in late autumn. Of all the
trees on Grindstone Mountain, this red bud was Patient Wife's favorite.
It is mid-winter as I write so we will not paint leaves on
the red bud, but it will be far from bare.
A woven-grass birdhouse, sunflower-seed feeder, peanut butter log, and
finch feeder will hang from its branches.
Beneath the tree in the immediate foreground we will paint a birdbath
and behind the tree will be a statue of St. Francis, the same one
Patient Wife
and I brought from California thirty-odd years ago.
On the branches we will add, depending upon the time of day
we are trying to recreate, cardinals, blue jays, robins, red-winged
blackbirds,
redheaded woodpeckers, juncos, chickadees, finches, and wrens. We
can add quail and dove on the ground
under the tree and, if the season we have selected for our painting is
autumn,
we can paint in two or three does, with their fauns, browsing for
acorns.
Behind the red bud in the middle of our picture we’ll paint
in two gooseberry bushes and a very large (ten or twelve feet high)
beauty
bush. The latter is a favorite hangout
for the cardinals, particularly striking in winter when their scarlet
coats and
bright orange bills show to advantage against the gray-brown limbs of
the
bush. The finches prefer the
gooseberries so that at times it appears the bushes are all atwitter
with them.
Several times a week at noon or early evening our resident
roadrunner darts back and forth through the yard and under the red bud
and the
beauty bush. He pays no attention to
the bird feeders nor to the other birds, but woe to the unwary lizard
or grass
snake that happens to catch his eye. We
will have to paint him on the run because he seldom seems to stand
still.
Beyond the beauty bush and a second birdbath, frequented
mostly by the cardinals, we will paint in a split-rail fence that zigs
and zags
defining the yard for the Farm House and Miss Vinnie's Cottage.
It is not a boundary as such. Godfrey and Otis jump over it at
will in
pursuit of rabbits and squirrels; deer leap over it to find the
choicest
acorns; and the Hillspeak cats know that it was put there for the sole
purpose
of providing them unlimited claw-sharpening and sun bathing.
Beyond the fence we’ll paint in some outbuildings, lots of
trees and, on most days, a limitless blue sky.
If you would like view this picture I shall be very
happy to share my window any time you are in the neighborhood.
©SPEAK, INC
805 CR 102 - EUREKA SPRINGS AR 72632-9705
PHONE: 479-253-9701 FAX:
479-253-1277 E-MAIL: speak@speakinc.org
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