May 1, 2024

Tomorrow

My cell phone started buzzing, waking me up early. It was my wife calling to say good morning. I turned on the lights, which were way too bright, so she could see my groggy face on the FaceTime call. After we chatted, I got out of bed, took the dogs out, and fed them. That left the rest of the morning open for coffee and writing.

Work started off busy with several meetings. The heavy meeting schedule, along with a two-hour appointment in the afternoon, put the squeeze on the time I had to complete selected tasks. At least the appointment pulled me away from the house and even gave me time to pick up lunch.

While at my appointment, my watch buzzed, letting me know someone was at the front door of my house. I checked the camera and saw a FedEx truck driving off. It was official. My new Vortex Viper HD 12x50 binoculars were here. After work was over, I eagerly opened the package and pulled out my new device for spotting wildlife. I tested them, looking out of my office window at a male cardinal perched on a fence post, a female cardinal feeding in the brush, and an old crow walking around the pasture.

The clarity was unbelievable and gave me an opportunity to see the avians in more detail. I even saw small butterflies flying through flowers at the far end of the pasture. These things were going to be great. The binoculars would help me spot wildlife and study them in greater detail from a further distance.

Today, I cleared a longstanding financial goal that I had been working on for several years. I called my wife and let her know we had finally achieved it and we celebrated over a FaceTime call. It was a special moment that I would probably always look upon.

I closed my computer at 6:03 PM, and five minutes later, I was walking into the woods. About a week and a half ago, the chinaberry trees blossomed, spraying a sweet scent across the entire property. Those flowers were now dying out, but new trees, Chinese Privets, were chock full of white fragrant flowers, keeping the olfactory party going. They lined the tree line on the west side of the property, and I had to duck under them to enter onto a secret trailhead. When I stepped into the forest, the sweet smell overtook me.

Spring was in full effect and the evening weather was warming. Even though there was plenty of light outside of my house, the forest looked dusky and filled with more shadows than light. I enjoyed walking around the trails and noted that I would need to bring the rake into the forest this weekend. Although we had cleared the trails, the wind had blown dead leaves onto the path and broken twigs were strewn about. The clean up would be much easier after all the work we did, but it was clear that maintenance would be required.

After walking a loop around the east side of the property, I arrived back to the pine grove and stepped inside my ground blind, hoping a herd of deer would show up to feed in the empty crop field. The blind was in a suitable position, and I noted the inside was lined with several spider webs. I set up a small folding stool, adjusted the windows, and waited quietly. After a half hour passed without seeing anything, I gathered my things, exited the blind, and made my way home. 

When I arrived at the house, I fed the dogs and spent some time playing with them. Just before darkness fell, I went back into the woods with a bag of deer corn and set up the feed in the grove near a trail camera. I followed my normal feeding protocol of pouring small piles of corn that were well separated. Last year, a trail camera caught a possessive deer shooing other deer from feeding on a single pile of corn. It was comical because the deer stood up on its hind legs and walked around, posturing against the other deer. It looked oddly humanlike. Now, I always spread the feed around to prevent hoarding.

After I returned to the house, I took some time to water the garden, as well as the flowers and ferns on the deck. Last, I gave water to two mimosa trees that were growing on each end of the deck. The largest one was just over a year old and was already fifteen feet high. We hoped it was large enough to flower this year. Apart from looking delicate and pretty, the unique flowers gave off a sweet aromatic scent that my wife loved. Mimosa trees were a part of her childhood in California, and she liked to pick the flowers and rub the delicate petals on my cheek, something she probably used to do as a child. There were several mimosa trees around the cleared area of the property, although there were none in the forest.

After tending to the trees and dogs, I downloaded photographs from my camera and worked on editing them. I felt sleepy, so I took a quick shower and got ready for bed. Wednesday night was here, and I knew that when I woke up in the morning, I could tell myself that my wife would be back “tomorrow”.