This, I think, is my least favorite holiday. We are to pay homage to those servicemen who have died in battle. I always wonder why we don’t have a day in which we pay homage to those who were tortured for being pacifists or doing their jobs as journalists. These people, at least in my mind, are also heroes.

So, it was business as usual around here today – I noticed when I was out riding that there were more cars on the road and more people in the woods than usual. Tis the season – the fiddlehead fern pickers are out and gathering as much as they can stuff in their cars. I have noticed that there are less ferns and more horsetail than previously. The pickers are under the

Ant Highway

misguided notion that the ferns will always be plentiful. The same with the Christmas tree scavengers.

I had decided that this was the day that I was going to assist Pete in his gardening endeavors. To this end, I was not going to do any of my own work. I was going to get out there and clear the upper beds for planting. This was my intention.

Before setting out, I decided to finish cleaning the upstairs, a project that I started yesterday. It was a project I’d put off for months. I could not find anything on my desk – everything was buried under everything else. I sorted through stuff yesterday afternoon because it was raining. And today, I swept and vacuumed. And after, I just kept going. I even cleaned out and swept out the outhouse, another project that I’d been putting off.

It felt good to get this done; it didn’t feel as good, blowing off writing in the morning, reading, and doing body awareness work. I had an ulterior motive in doing the inside work – this was that if I did this, my lost wallet might surface. It had been missing since my return from my trip, almost a month ago. In cleaning, I eliminated the places it might be. I was finally left with one place, a place I had checked before, which is my backpack, which was in the Black Hole. I was relieved to find it then, and I am still relieved now. I am paranoid enough about driving and being stopped by a cop. Having no license on me makes me even more paranoid. Had I not cleaned up, I might not have checked my pack because I would not have exhausted all my options.

I put Raudi through her agility paces after lunch and then Pete (on Hrimmi) and I went for a ride. This is when we saw all the people. There was one gaggle that had a bird dog with them, a young, senseless animal. The person in charge of it had it in hand and walked him past the horses, which amazingly, stood quietly.

The rest of the ride was uneventful. She’s over the cyclical hump – still a bit of a ditz, but not, as before, out of her mind.

Now it is raining. A good way to end a not-so-memorable day.

Next: 149. 5/29/18: A Conversation with Raudi