Bill spent the time after dinner cutting up the bundles of branches that were lopped off the maple tree last summer. Our backyard is atrocious, overrun with bundles of branches and dandelions. We've come across some mega-sized greens that any bunny would die for and we keep saying that we need to get more bunnies in here so we can put the dandelions to good use. Come time for sunset he had had enough of working and sweating and came in the house to entice me to go off and watch the sunset. We decided to go to Marsh Lake, which doesn't have a view facing the sunset but does have a fairly nice expanse of water to look out upon. It's a fishing lake in Fairfield that used to be a quarry operation. Now the parks and recreation department of Fairfield run it for fishing.

We didn't expect to see much waterfowl on the lake. There never is. There were only half a dozen mallards, all drakes, and two Canada geese that we kept hearing honk at each other across the lake. A woman den leader was there with her little charges and a couple of father helpers doing some cub scout fishing activity. They left when it started getting dark.

Like I said it's not much of a lake but it was nice to sit there and look out upon the water and observe what little wildlife there was. We saw several humongous spiders busy building webs between the bars of the handrails of the sidewalk. We heard and saw many starlings gathering in the trees to the north of the lake. It was a posturing gala for them. We saw fish jumping in spots after the fisherpeople walked away from them. We heard the first cricket of the season merrily chirping in the bush. The air was heavy with a perfumy flowery smell. We couldn't decide if it was coming from the tree to the right of us (that we don't know the name of) that was decked out in dangling white flowers or from the large puffs of white on the snowball bushes behind us. We felt a cool breeze curling up our backs and evaporating the sweat from our necks. We didn't get to watch the sun go down but we felt an unwinding and a release that comes from sitting back and watching nature doing its thing in the warmer months of the year.

Driving home I had a sense of "Ahhhhh." People were out everywhere enjoying the warm spring evening. Kids were on their bikes riding up and down the sidewalks gathering in all the sense of freedom they could before they had to go inside for the night. In a large driveway, several people were motoring their remote-controlled car around the perimeters of the tarmac. Two older people were sitting in their lawn chairs in front of their open garage watching the cars go by. Yep, there was just one big sense of comfort, joy, and freedom out there tonight.

And every year I have to wonder why do I go through being shut up for five freaking months while nature does its death routine? I guess you gotta live where you gotta live. Sigh, I almost made it to Florida forever one time.