...is heard in the land. I have noticed this spring how many lawnmowers there are around us and how noisy they are. But the big thing I've noticed is that not a day goes by that I DON'T hear a lawnmower. It is a constant entity. Bill and I may be sitting peacefully out in the Zinn Center hearing birds, soothed by the spring greenery, and relaxed and THEN...a lawnmower. Most the time it is the guy next door who seems to have a fetish about cutting his lawn. He cuts it every three or four days using his big riding mower. Around and around he goes endlessly. Sigh. We've heard the individual lawnmowers so much over this past five years that we can identify which yard it is by the sound of the mower. The guy catty-corner to us moved but his house is still up for sale. He has the most obnoxious mower of them all. There's something about the pitch of it. It's a big industrial-type mower. We are still having to hear his mower. Well, at least, we don't have to hear him gunning his noisy motorcycle every nice day like we used to.

I'm sitting here looking out on a bright, bright, sunshiny day. The aroma of something baking is drifting in my window and my nose is saying, "Yum." I can't make out if it's brownies or stickie buns. That is wishful thinking on my part since I've been wanting to make either one of those. It's probably cookies. I've got the nausea more under control (when I remember to take it with my meal) so I'm not as picky about what to eat. That's been hard on Bill but he's most easy-going about it. Lately, he tries to get me thinking about what I'm in the mood to eat because if he doesn't I will wait and wait and wait till the last minute. If I'm not hungry it is hard to know what I want to eat.

On four occasions now, Bill has been asked to give a talk at the UU church in Oxford. He gave this one on Memorial Day just last week. It was at Bunker Hill cemetery where a lot of Universalists were buried. There used to be a Universalist church on the premises but it burned down, get this, because a still that was inside the church exploded. That cracks me up. But, I guess, making moonshine was big with the Universalist's community back then. Actually, it was very touching to be sitting there in the small cemetery surrounded by very old entombed people and hundreds of irises. Some of the tombstones bore dates back to the Revolutionary War. That was a fallen soldier's stone. There were representatives from every war until 1918. Sometime in 1918 they buried the last person in the cemetery, a woman. Bill gave a grand talk, as usual full of interesting facts and history of the place, and inserting his particular brand of humor that always makes the listerners last. If you'd like to read what he had to say today, here is the link-- (sorry, link still forthcoming).

Uh, oh, we have another cat knocking on our door, sigh. This gray and white female cat meowed at me from down below. She was soooooo skinny it was unbelievable. I just had to go out and feed her a can of cat food. She was ravenous and gulped it down. Who knows how long ago she had a full meal. Then when Bill got home he got her some dry food. Since it is easier for him to get out the screen door to the Zinn Center, he's been the one going out and petting her and feeding her now. She has settled in with him. She sits on the swing with him when I'm not out there. And already Bill has brought her into the Zinn Center when it's raining, keeping all the other cats out. The other three hate her guts. Too bad. She appears to be about a year old and my three already established cats are 10-years-old and 9-years-old. But age doesn't have anything to do with their sour nature when it comes to us bringing another cat in the house. They were living out on their own when I met them and I think that had something to do with their attitude. They don't trust other cats even after all these years of the good life and being sheltered inside. We're taking the new cat, which we are already calling Sylvie, to the vet this afternoon to get her dewormed. We think that is mostly why she's so skinny. We'll spend the money to get her neutered, too, so there won't be any surprise litter of kittens. But as for her living inside the house, I dunno. The chances are slim. She hangs around on the deck all day and my cats sniff at her but they also howl and growl and hiss and Kaboodle whops at her through the screen. I'm hoping that if she hangs around out there long enough that my three will get used to her. We shall see.

Other than that, spring is springing along.