24. Sunday in Stillwater

It’s Sunday. I’m walking around Boomer Lake on the walking/biking path with Persimmon. The sky of pure blue is giving way to a cloudy haze as the temperature rises and the fresh breeze grows more humid. As I cross the bridge where the creek feeds into the lake, I see an old guy below me sitting with his legs dangling off the concrete wall, in faded denim from top to bottom, smoking a cigarette and reading a Tom Clancy novel, with a second book on the side as a backup. He doesn’t notice me or the dog or the passing traffic, completely absorbed in his book. As I come closer, he jerks with a start, throws down his paperback, squinting one-eyed to avoid the smoke from the cigarette still clenched between his teeth, and grabs his fishing pole that had been perched on the ledge. The sun glints off the water as he begins to reel in his fish. The purple martins and the swallows dip and dive, then fight for space in the common birdhouse. The Canada geese couldn’t care less. They beep and honk at odd intervals.

Such is the vibe in Stillwater on an early Sunday afternoon.

As it turns out, Sunday is a good day to be outside. After Boomer Lake, I decide to go for a walk to the lot. Our lot. My husband is mowing and trimming and chainsawing and weed-whacking and billy-goating (yeah, it’s a thing)...but he stops and tells me to follow him because he has something to show me. We tuck our pants legs into our socks (his are already duct-taped around his ankles) and make sure our hats are on straight, because there are creepy-crawly things in the woods. Mostly ticks. We move quickly down the newly-billy-goated path, past the line of spruce and the fallen oak, through thick and scratchy vegetation, to a small clearing. And I see this:

A whole flowerbed of purple iris, as pretty as you please.

And then I look up and see this:

And I bend down to see this:

And, this:

And of course the pond with its soft blanket of algae:

And its guardian trees:

And another iris...they're springing up everywhere.

Such is the vibe in Stillwater on an early Sunday afternoon.