You might experience a double take and wonder why I have picked such a fickle unfitting title for this week’s heading. After all, the weather outside hovers at 16 below the zero mark, and the snow by my back walk I have piled neatly and deep. I have no really particular reason of legitimacy, other than it brings back fond memories of a childhood poem of a spider in a rain spout, within which he lived, but was rain washed out.
Yet, on the other hand, I enjoy activating my editor’s spell check on occasion, as it keeps each and every one of them more awake, not sleeping while on the job. But, too, to you readers, I feel it perhaps needs a little more explanation. So I’ll hunker down, while my thinker thunks, and come up with some explanation as to why I should so think as I do.
When the Little Lady and I first saw our present chosen thick stone walled, vine covered, cottage abode, in which I still abide, we fell in love with it. As it was over a century and a half old, sporting an heritage name plaque bragging of 1850 vintage, it needed a lot of repairs, but little, other than the roof, needed replacement. Redecorating it, compatible to its heritage, though a little on the expensive side, was a lot of fun, in both planning, picking, and saving labour costs by so doing.
The first room to be decorated, after the initial, make usable scramble with bathroom and kitchen, was an ex-bedroom with a wide deep sill and a large multi-paned window. It was not long in getting painted, papered, curtains, bookshelves, and pictures of extended family, properly hung. This room was socially, proudly presented to visitors, by the Little Lady, as our den. She had every reason to be proud of it, for it was warm, bright, and yet cozy. It was a room in which comfort was ambient. She, fondly, to family, referred to it as my Dawg House. The “my” in that instance was in full reference to me.
It was to this room she would alway send me, when she felt I was underfoot in the kitchen. Being retired, I felt it my duty to do a quality check on anything and everything that came off of the stove or out of the oven. After all, a man has got to do what he has got to do. And certain things like apple pie and butter tarts, definitely need to be quality checked. Once, twice, perhaps three times, at not too far apart intervals, in order to just make certain. On those occasions she would stomp her foot, reach for the broom, and with no further explanation necessary, I went promptly to my dawg house.
My dawg house, is a very pleasant comfortable room. I spend a great deal of my hours in there, thinking thoughts that just need to be thunk. The sun shines full through the east looking view in the early mornings of winter. In the summer it is shaded by a maple. My outside pond goldfish have claimed wintertime squatters right, in a large 40 gallon tank on the window sill. A Styrofoam incubator, for hatching cute little fluffy baby bantam chicks, perches on an offset table. And above the fish tank in the window, keeping company with the a large beautiful table centred Clivia miniata, which blooms in the winter, hangs a relatively contented vine of the Hoya family; Stephanotis floribunda. It is that plant that is guilty of quite a number of things.
In the first place it is a slow grower. It first sends out a long snake-like feeler in no set direction. It will randomly wave and wander until it finds something upon which it can twine its tendrils. Weeks later quite thick clustered leaves appear. Soon strong scented blooms arrive unnoticed at night, giving off a total house permeating odour, not at all unlike sweet smelling smoke of marijuana.
But try to explain it not being so to the wide eyed, pot smoking, delivery boy at your door. This morning, when I looked up, it was misbehaving again. There among its out-stretched arms, silhouetted against the belly of a pale blue sky, was a really neat, colourful spider’s web. Within its centre, eyeing me, as I eyed it, on a newly opened blossom, was an iggily spiggily … ? You guessed it. Spider. And I didn’t have the heart to Swiffer such an artistic master piece. It was much, much, too beautiful in the early morning sun.
Take care, ‘cause we care.
