Well, I made my first post yesterday and the Earth did not go spinning off its axis, the internet did not grind to a halt and my life did not change for the worse.
So I guess it's safe to try another post.
Yesterday was a perfect spring day in Carden. The temperature was warm enough to not need a coat but not so warm as to bring out the blackflies. We were able to sit, bug-free, by a babbling brook, leaning against the granite of The Land Between and checking out the lichens and liverworts around us. Birds were singing, trilliums were getting ready to flower and the bugs stayed away.
You may note the theme of bugs....unfortunately, Carden is blessed with bugs. I'd been pretty spoiled before I moved to Carden - very few bugs to spoil the day outside. No incessant buzzing around the head. No great gouges taken out of your skin. No rising welts driving you crazy with their itchiness.
And then I moved to Carden.
It was early May when I moved; the blackflies hadn't yet come out. Standing comfortably outside chatting with the new neighbour, it was suggested that I remove the lower branches of the large spruce tree beside the driveway. "That way, you can sit under it", I was told. What a brilliant idea! And I had the perfect chair to put there.
And so, I started the process of removing the lower branches. With an extendable pole saw, I reached higher and higher, sawing off the branches close to the trunk, getting only slightly scratched when the prickly branches fell on my head.
When the tree was finally ready for the perfect chair, when I was ready to sit out with a good book and a cup of tea, that was when the bugs showed up. Blackflies - tiny black vehicles of destruction that like to gather in great clouds around your head, burrowing into your hair to attack your scalp, tiptoeing around the ear in search of the most delectable piece of ear lobe, driving you blind with their numbers.
Okay, so blackflies don't like the heat of summer. They are a spring insect. All I had to do was wait for it to get hotter, right?
Well, I waited. And as the swarms of blackflies became smaller and smaller until only a single culprit would dare to land and gouge, the air became filled instead with the incessant buzzing whine of........the mosquito. Truthfully, I dislike the mosquito far more than the blackfly simply for that horrid noise that it makes. God forbid that one of these voracious creatures should get into the house where it will invariably find the bedroom. There it will lurk until the depths of the night when you are soundly sleeping. And then it will fill your ears with its song, somehow becoming both invisible and silent whenever you turn the light on to find, and kill, it.
Mosquito season lasts, well, the entire summer. In the morning when I wake, I try to look out the window to check out the weather but my view is blocked by a thousand mosquitoes perched on the screen, hoping to find a way in to the room.
Once again, the perfect chair stays empty. And I wonder what the heck my neighbour was thinking when he talked about pruning the spruce.
Finally, the perfect September weather seems to defeat the mosquito.
And so for a few brief weeks, I am able to sit under the spruce, revelling in bug-free sunshine.
Ah, life is good after all.
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