Another American Adventure: the shrubs

Thursday, May 20, 2010

the shrubs

These are the shrubs as they look today (May 20th, 2010). We planted them awhile ago to give some cover to the backyard, which was exposed when we finally took down the rickety old rotten wooden fence. The summer rains have started, and I want to keep track of how fast they will grow.

Meanwhile, it looks as if we may be about to embark on the next American adventure, but I still can't be sure. Background checks and whatever else seem to have taken forever, and as of yesterday, they said that John wouldn't know if he started work in Cranberry TWP, PA on Monday until COB today. Who knows what COB means?! I mean, these guys must be from the military or something (or else it's a different world than we imagine). After some googling, we found out that COB means "Close of Business" ... If John reports for duty on Monday, that means he has to leave tomorrow morning! I'll believe all of this when it happens.

Another shrub photo:

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"In those first days, people said, a squirrel could run the long length of Pennsylvania without ever touching the ground. In those first days, the woods were white oak and chestnut, hickory, maple, sycamore, walnut, wild ash, wild plum, and white pine. The pine grew on the ridgetops where the mountains' lumpy spines stuck up and their skin was thinnest.

"The wilderness was uncanny, unknown. Benjamin Franklin had already invented his stove in Philadelphia by 1753, and Thomas Jefferson was a schoolboy in Virginia; French soldiers had been living in forts along Lake Erie for two generations. But west of the Alleghenies in western Pennsylvania, there was not even a settlement, not even a cabin. No Indians lived there, or even near there.

"Wild grapevines tangled the treetops and shut out the sun. Few songbirds lived in the deep woods. Bright Carolina parakeets - red, green, and yellow - nested in the dark forest. There were ravens then, too. Woodpeckers rattled the big trees' trunks, ruffed grouse whirred their tail feathers in the fall, and every long once in a while a nervous gang of empty-headed turkeys came hustling and kicking through the leaves - but no one heard any of this, no one at all."

Annie Dillard, An American Childhood.