Stop Growing!

This is what my house looks like by the time August rolls around, ha ha, but I do have to say: the ivy wrapping my office window feels like it’s starting to smother me, like the moss in that Emily Dickinson poem. Also, there’s a cricket hiding someplace downstairs. Also,  the garbage disposal just choked on its own vomit and died altogether: too many zucchini peels. Plus there’s this ungodly smell outside the back door, as if you threw a bunch of rotting cabbage and crab shells.

This slightly gross picture is of the nest of the birds who perched on my office windowsill all summer. Mrs. Dove raised two babies in late June, sent them on their way, then forgot all about where babies come from, returned to her perch and began once again entertaining the advances of Mr. Dove, leading to a whole NEW set of babies who sat there in the same original nest along with so much bird poo it lapped against the glass like kudzu. When they finally left a week or two ago I lifted the sash and hosed it all away, bedroom, nursery, kitchen and bath, which were, of course, all one room. It was mean of me maybe but this life, this teeming life! It’s wearing me out!

This is me out back looking for the source of that wicked smell. What can I say? Eve in Eden I ain't.