Blackberry Winter Ghost Town
21 April 2013
Spring is here. Finally. Well, Blackberry Winter anyway. Which means, here in the American South, a cold snap in spring. Which also meant all the potted plants that overwintered in the living room and got dragged out on the deck early last week, got dragged back inside.
Never the less it is spring, and things change. For about the last two weeks, as the trees clothed themselves in lime-green lace and the daffodils and redbud trees put on a show, the deer stopped turning up for breakfast. I went from pouring out seven mounds of whole corn kernels while the does waited for breakfast a few yards away, to dead silence when I rattled the corn scoop to call them in. I have no one to say, “Good morning, ladies,” to.
After considerable rain, The Prince Consort suggested we take a ride on Green Hornet, our ATV, down to see the river. To see how high the water had risen on our land. With the roar of the waterfalls that form in the river cliffs after so much rain, we buzzed on down. As we came through the arbor of saplings into the open bottom land before the forest, we spotted the missing deer.
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| Green Hornet |
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| River’s Up! |
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| Redbud on the bank across the river. |
The deer ran this way and that, but not far from us.
In fact two of the does almost ran through our sitting spot, while we were stopped by the river bank.
On our way back home, the deer didn’t bother to run at all. They just stared at us. I want to believe they recognized my chipmunk-pitched voice and the words I kept saying, “Hi, ladies.” Of course they were probably asking each other who was the blabber-mouth who told the crazy humans where they were.
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| Four does just inside the tree line. |
Kath: Now how am I going to tie this blog into my obsession over the CBAY writing contest? Oh, yeah. The expedition was an outdoors break from revising my manuscript. I’m as busy as the beavers who worked so hard on these:
That’ll do it. Deadline is May 1. Online voting starts May 3. No pressure.
