April 14, 2024

Hummingbirds And Dragonflies

I woke up on Sunday morning feeling rested. After an expresso, I fed the dogs and sat outside. The temperature was in the mid-forties and felt cold. My wife was still gone, but I knew she would be back sometime this evening. This kept me in high spirits, and I showered and headed to Wilson to eat breakfast at Cracker Barrel.

Despite the restaurant being packed, the hostess quickly seated me at a small table suitable for a party of one. Since I met my wife, I rarely ate alone. For the past two years, however, she’s been in graduate school, which has taken her out of town for extended periods. Still, I was surprised by how different the dining experience was when eating out alone. Everything went faster and was a little boring. I suppose it was cheaper, but I would gladly buy breakfast for wifey just to see her face and hear her voice.

After breakfast, I stopped at Dunham’s sporting good store, where I bought some line swivels for fishing. Papa Jack’s in Kenly was out of them, and I was running low. I picked up three packets for ninety-nine cents each. I also bought a tool my wife could use to massage her tight shoulders. They had been bothering her for a while now, probably from sitting too long while studying. I also bought her a Yeti can holder in her school’s color, so we would both have one. Occasionally, she enjoyed a cold beer, but we drank several cans of carbonated water throughout the day. The holder kept the beverage cold and didn’t sweat all over the desk or table.

I made a stop at Target to pick up some more dog kibble, cans of water, and a card for my wife. The self-checkout was closed, so I waited in line for almost twenty-minutes. I didn’t mind since it was my day off. Because I found myself on an impromptu shopping spree, I stopped at Harris Teeter and picked up some different IPAs. There were two beers from Noda Brewing Company, Lil Slurp, a Juicy IPA, and Slurp Surfin, a West Coast IPA. 

After I unloaded all the groceries, I changed clothes and walked out into the pine grove to check the corn I laid out the day before. The high winds had flipped my ground blind upside down about thirty feet from where I set it up. Near the twisted blind, the corn remained untouched by the deer, but the piles placed away from the blind showed small divots made by the deers’ muzzles. The corn furthest away was almost completely gone and corn particles that dropped from the deers’ grinding molars were everywhere. There were several pregnant does in the area, so I’m sure they were hungry and in search of nutrition for their young. While inspecting the corn, I heard a movement in the brush, probably the deer camping out by the nearby food source. They were sometimes protective of their food, nudging other deer away, or standing on their hind legs to look more intimidating.

In the afternoon, my wife called advising me she was an hour away, and she was hungry. She told me she was going to pick up food, but called back asking if we had anything to eat at the house. As soon as we got off the phone, I tenderized a ribeye, salted it with the cilantro lime salt my wife loved so much, and threw the steak on the smoker. When she was ten minutes away, I turned up the heat, cooking the meat off. After she arrived, she sliced the steak and put it on a salad she made. I was still full from a large, late breakfast.

It was good to back together, but we both felt that crash that happened when we had been apart. When we were together, life was simple, and when apart, everything took more effort. On days like today, when we reunited, we felt happy, but the stress of being apart left us feeling tired. Today was a day to recharge. She fell asleep in the hammock while I sat in a rocking chair beside her, writing on my computer and sipping coffee. The afternoon was quiet outside, except for the long breezes sweeping through the treetops and the mellow sound of the large chime in the garden. It was sunny, but the breeze was cool.

Later, I went inside for a bit and my wife saw our first hummingbird near the feeder we purchased about a month ago. It usually took a while for a new feeder to be located, but once a hummingbird found it, the tiny bird would usually return. I looked forward to seeing and photographing it.

In the evening, we drove into Wilson to pick up some pizza, salad, and garlic knots. After, we sat at our new outdoor table eating and talking about life. The weather was perfect and my wife noticed the sun had shifted, eliminating all but a sliver of shade on the deck. During the winter, the sun never touched the deck, and during spring and summer, there was no shade.

We continued our evening by walking into the grove. An eastern gray squirrel was munching on corn kernels. It kept moving ahead of us in the direction we were walking. The poor thing probably thought we were chasing it. When we arrived near the creek, there was a herd of deer well hidden by the tall golden grasses. We watched them for a few minutes and then moved on to Beaver Tooth Rock, where we chatted for a while. I inspected the tiny new leaves of a nearby maple tree. My wife pointed out how waxy and shiny the recent growth looked.

Back at the house, we sat down outside, her in the hammock and me in a rocking chair. The sun was dropping and the air cooling. A large swarm of mosquitoes flew over our heads about ten feet above us. Oddly enough, they never came down to bite. The sight was unpleasant, with forty or fifty buzzing mosquitoes flying randomly in circles, like electrons around a cartoon atom. The mood shifted, however, when we saw a dragonfly arrive, which we thought was beautiful. Then the neatest thing happened. The dragonfly started flying up into the swarm, catching mosquitoes. It looked like a little Apache helicopter taking out the flying insects one by one, eating about ten or fifteen of them. It was one of the coolest air shows I had seen.