Writing as Catharsis

I guess I would have to say I am still experiencing displacement issues. It’s been three weeks, and somehow I thought I would have been more acclimated by now. Perhaps writing the blog, even though I don’t have a lot of new nature to share, might be something that can feel like my former life.

I take that back on not noting any new species, one new species that has been more than abundantly prevalent has been the “Friendly Texan”.
Living up to their press as a more than welcoming people, I have found even a simple phone call to find out where to get my dog’s nails cut ( admission, in the past, I have done it myself and had the kitchen look like a blood bath had taken place, so now , it is the one thing I can afford the luxury of “trickle down economics” ), led to a lengthy discussion of how to cut an aging parrots talons, then on to “Welcome to Texas, but just one word of warning, don’t drink the water or give it to your dogs either”. Ah, good safety tip, I take it, it is so full of limestone that my innards would start to grow stalactites.

Another conversation with a neighbor included the interesting admonishment that I should be sure to feed the resident feral cat, or cats as the case may be. Hmm, out of kindness and compassion? “Well no M’am” and I don’t want to scare you, but that white and orange one killed a copperhead and rattlesnake in your yard last summer so you want to keep him on your side”. O.K. Makes me think twice about tiptoeing through the ivy to retrieve a bird feeder that keeps falling there.

And EVERYONE has warned me about the heat. “Oh you just wait, in a couple of months you’re going to die!” Nothing I wasn’t aware of, but now so many people have told me that that I feel I should start work on my own eulogy. Other’s ask me if I have encountered fire ants yet, which I have a feeling are perhaps everywhere but in a winter slow down at the moment. I suppose all the critters of summer will be something to blog about when they start biting with a vengeance.

Just yesterday I joined a group of people who are in a Master Gardening class, no room for me to take any gardening until next Sept, but again, they were also willing to fill me with information. Most of which went over my head, you know, when you are so new you don’t really even know what to ask. I was trying to figure out which of the lifeless bushes in my yard needed pruning and which were to be left. Unfortunately by the time the kind gardener was done telling me this abundance of things, the bushes were all cut so I am still not sure what they were. Yet I went at it today cutting things to the nub that either will return lovelier then ever, or disappear and not be a worry anymore. I am truly hoping for the former over the latter.

So onward and upwards hoping one day to transition from that ache of missing home to feeling this IS home. It will come. Probably just in time for me to expire from the heat, wouldn’t that be a pity.