This is a very pretty bike, I said to myself as I walked toward it the other day. I mean, I wouldn’t want a big hog like that, but it’s nice, I get it. 

And it’s a sign of the times that such a machine finds itself outside the town senior center. I’m good with a $25000 machine pulling up for a subsidized breakfast… Who knows how people should live their lives?

But there’s something about the handicapped tag that bothered me. I mean, if you can’t walk inside from the parking lot, should you be riding? Really?

We are blessed with a nice number of little wooded trails within walking distance. Unfortunately, the seclusion that makes for a nice walk also makes a good place to dispose of all the stuff that you don’t want to haul to the dump and pay to get rid of. 

I have a new weather app called Dark Sky, that tells me in excruciating detail something I already more or less knew: hour by hour, today’s forecast will oscillate between “overcast” and “mostly cloudy.”

So, a moment of sunshine this morning was extra welcome.

Q: What could cause Deja and Vu to share this rare moment of stillness and unity?

A: The Chuck Norris of squirrels. 

This guy has lost his tail and his right arm in some previous conflict, and he’s been hanging around beneath the bird feeders recently. I suspect the cats secretly think he would be an easy target, with the disability and all, but I’m not so sure… there’s a lot of cats out there and none of them has taken him down. 

A tractor, a tamper, and a few yards of sure-pack gravel, and the High Street house goes from 2 seasonally-muddy parking spots to 3 that are gloriously well-drained. No forsythia were harmed in the process of excavation, although some tulips were. 

Will this blog posting get more hits because I included the title of an extremely popular book? It was a good book, so if you’re here for that reason, sorry, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

My goldfinches, viewed through the kitchen window with my ghostly reflection, are unusually bright and numerous this year, as if the warm spring really agreed with them.

Brattleboro’s big parking structure was an impressive thing both structurally and politically when it was built back in 2003. As a major New England tourist destination on the rise, we needed a place to put all the Volvos and BMWs sweeping in each weekend. And electric car chargers!
Time marches on, all too quickly in my opinion, and now the staircase on the side of the garage is falling apart and is about to be replaced. We do still get some of those tourists , but unfortunately the spot is better known as a hangout for people with nowhere else to go. 

Atop that crumbling staircase – 13 years, really? – some of those people truly do find Heaven, or at least a little baggie of something else that starts with “h” and makes you feel better about things for a while. I don’t think the new stairs will change that dynamic, but one can always hope. 

  
Curious convergent contrail collection