Ugh!

It must be withdrawal. I've got no projects in front of me (okay, I could be writing), with the exception of my sister's offer to pay me twelve bucks an hour to complete some chores that involve a paint brush, a screw driver and a hammer. About a week’s worth of work. Sounds very tempting.

First things first. I need to recover. My immune system held through the six week meet at Saratoga and didn’t cost me the whopping $100 bonus for “perfect” attendance. From out of nowhere, at least nowhere I can pin point, a cold swooped down on poor little old me. The night Sarah Palin was to give her address to the Republican Convention my throat felt like I swallowed a carrot scrapper. Nevertheless, I managed to make my presentation to the Wilton Heritage Society. I did a good job, but I wasn’t no Sarah Palin. The Heritage Society later mailed me a check for $25.00, which I will graciously return to their coffers.

It didn’t take long for the track to begin its move south to Belmont. Even as I signed out on the last day, boxes and crates of “what nots” began filling the musty hallways. When I picked up my paycheck on Thursday the betting machines were gone and the statues of jockeys disappeared. The place looked like a ghost town, wind swirls and all. There were a few horses exercising on the Oklahoma Track. I thought of Parker Buckley’s family. Their loss. Robbed of a father, a husband. And all along I thought I had been robbed of a summer. There is some perceptive.

As soon as I kick this bug that has left my skin achy and my head feeling like a stuffed cabbage at a St Patrick’s Day feast, I’ll get back to serious running and writing. Right now I’ll settle for breathing threw my eyeballs.

Hurricane Hanna has dumped a day long drizzle on Upstate New York. The trees seem to wear a cloak of leaves, branches pulled up to their ears, waiting for the weather to clear. In the back yard the maple tree bows under the weight of a thousand rain drops.

The elms continue to be slaughter by the bark beetle. Since Mom died two years ago, we have lost six to the pest. She would have been heart broken. I’m doing what I can to insure someone can enjoy a tree in the future. Before the rain, I transplanted a young tulip tree that had been growing in the holly bushes beneath the garage window. Its trunk twisted in its attempt to reach the sky. I dug a deep hole near the old elm tree stump and said a little prayer for the foot high tree. Its father, a tree Mom thought would never survive, towers the maples near the road. It’s hardly a native species to New York.

The old butternut trees have begun to drop their nuts which leave dark black grease spots on the road after being squished by a car tire. I’ve gathered a couple dozen of the sticky green nuts and will try to germinate the seeds. That means having a moist bag of nuts in the bottom of the refrigerator for 120 days. It takes a long time to grow a tree this way, but if you never start, they never grow. If you need any inspiration to grow a tree, remember the seedling Robin brought home from the woods. I hope I have the problem of where to plant the seedlings come spring.

Here's the little Japanese red maple that I plucked from Congress park this spring before the lawn movers and weedwhackers hacked it to fodder. I transplanted it in Dad's yard just before we headed off to Europe. It lost a leaf and grew a few others. Survived its first summer.