September 14, 2025

Return with vengeance to the garden, spading, weeding, settling the fall bulbs, cleaning and moving the water gardens. In the grass I found big feathers and tufts of down from a turkey, and one long hawk feather. I wonder if hawk and turkey had a disagreement in my garden. I’d have thought a turkey too large for a red-tailed, but the warriors screaming in my trees might have tried anyway. 

Failed to mention my trip to the Arboretum, where I walked in the gardens and bought two more indoor plants, now potted and settled. A bus had brought a load of old people. I kept thinking of myself as separate from them. . .  but nobody else would. 

Shamed by my sometimes not leaving the house for a full day, or two, I decided to go to the theater last night. It was a battle between going out and staying home, and only at the last possible moment did I put on a decent shirt and get into the car, heading to Waynesville to see A Little Night Music at HART. When I got there (through miles of detours) the main theater was dark. In the new theater, though, was a banquet with everybody dressed in– I think– Roaring Twenties costumes, all feathers and glitter, and a voluptuous banquet spread on tables at the entrance. It was like stepping into a Fellini movie. I turned around and came home. Still haven’t looked up what was actually going on, but was impressed that HART could get together a party so massive and, by the evidence of my wars, joyful. The sun was behind me on the drive home, lighting the mountains with gold touched by pink. Perhaps that splendor was the intent of the mistaken journey, for it felt purposeful in some way, not merely the outcome of not having prepared or bought a ticket beforehand.