My students don't quite want to say that the Duke in "My Last Duchess" is right to kill the Duchess, but they seem to think she really was at fault in a serious way. I'm seriously creeped out.
I was with some friends this weekend, and someone called our state "The Mississippi of the midwest."
We had some major melting this weekend. It was above freezing by a fair bit, and that was lovely. I had raked my roof in the two places it seems to get an ice dam, and it melted off nicely.
I try to imagine what I would have thought when I was a kid of someone saying "I raked my roof." I don't think it would have made any sense at all. But now, I'm truly a midwesterner, and I rake my roof. And everyone here knows exactly what I'm about.
My neighbor's dog is visiting for the week, so I dug around the back yard fence gates so I could close them. I don't tend to wander into the backyard a lot during winter, especially since we have more snow than usual on the ground.
So I was disturbed to see how much visible damage the rabbits have done. Many of my shrubs live in cages, but the snow's been so high that it's over the cages, and the rabbits have been feasting.
I keep the gates open in winter because I have a fantasy that the local fox will come in and eat the rabbits. I apparently live a rich and full fantasy life. The rabbits live off my garden shrubs. They're winning.
I know winter is coming back next week, but yesterday I was standing on the deck out in the sun in just long johns, sweats and a normal shirt, and it felt so good. I'm definitely ready for spring, but spring isn't coming until May (usually). Three more long months of winter.
Your poetry students are creeping me out.
ReplyDeleteI love that your rich and full fantasy life involves small-mammal carnage. . .er, predation in your backyard.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, your poetry students are creepy. Maybe you should set them on the rabbits?
Or, is your fantasy fox the Duke, and the rabbits the Dutchess? I think you should rethink your judgement of your students until your domestic sphere is purged of homocidal fantasies entirely. ;)
ReplyDeleteMy fantasies are more lagomorphal than homicidal, I'm afraid. Though there's a hawk that flies around occasionally, and I have to admit that I wouldn't object to some avian carnage, either, so long as I got to see it.
ReplyDeleteYes, your poetry students are creepy.
ReplyDeleteAnd though it really does feel like spring around here, I'm so glad you said that spring isn't coming until May, because I've started to get nervous about whether I should be starting seeds (which I haven't even purchased) because of the weather and the fact that Kroger now has the new seeds. But six weeks before May 1 is still. . .March 15. So I've got some time. A month, in fact. Ahhh.
No signs of any bulbs, so it can't be spring, right?
Try asking my wife to rake our roof and she will climb up there with a scalpel and scrape off the dried droppings of birds. That's like our permanent problem with our roofing. Well, it's not really an issue about the roof; it's about those stupid birds that who give us daily supplies of their poop. It's disgusting! I swear, we're gonna move out of Miami if they don't stop!
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