Off The Beaten Path

My photo
Georgia, United States
Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Some people move our souls to dance. They awaken us to new understanding with the passing whisper of their wisdom. Some people make the sky more beautiful to gaze upon. They stay in our lives for awhile, leave footprints on our hearts, and we are never ever the same.

Friday, September 26

Flowers Still Bloom




I get up in the morning and leave the Motel and go down to the house. It isn't like there is much there to do, it has all been done except for more cleanup. I have a chainsaw, and I cut tree limbs, and I scrub down things that I find under debris, and I just keep busy. Today I called a man who said he would take down the house for the wood. The house has 120 year old cypress in the top, bottom and sides. The walls have two inch timbers and the whole house is sitting on cypress. So there is some dollar value in the house even if it is destroyed. But to get to the timber you have to take down the house. And I am not up to that. So I have hired a man to do it for me. The man came today and he said he would do it for me, well for himself. He is going to use the wood to build a new house for himself. I truthfully am glad it is going to be used. After the house is down, I will hire someone with big equipment to dig a big hole and bury what remains. And then I will walk away and go somewhere to get the smell of mildew out of my nostrils.

Tomorrow I will meet this man with a contract for him to begin. I am not sure that I will stay until it is completed, but maybe. In the meantime I will do cleanup. I have to cut and burn all of the wood that fell from the trees. I guess I could give it to someone with a wood burning stove, but getting rid of firewood this year is difficult, everyone has a downed tree to cut up of their own.

The porch is full of things that the kids want me to bring home. Their games were fairly protected under the bar, so I was able to save all of their games. I had a trailer hitch put on last week, and I am going to go and rent a U-haul when I am ready to leave. In the meantime I just putter, still cleaning things that can be cleaned and setting them out in the yard on one of those big blue tarps that FEMA gave us. It was supposed to go on the house roof, but in my case they decided it wouldn't do any good.

The flowers in the yard are blooming, oblivious to the disaster around them. The spider lilies are growing up through the boards of the roof that are now laying in the front yard. It is a strange sight to see the red among the busted board lying all around. The rain lilies are also in bloom and everyone that came over remarked on how pretty my yard looked. It was rather numbing to hear them say, "oh how pretty your flowers are, as they were talking in the same breath about my house."

Life goes on, flowers still grow, the red birds still come to the bird feeders, and the sun still shines across the backyard. I always loved the sight of the sun setting across the back yard and the way the oaks looked in the waning light. I used to sit on the back porch and watch the sun go down. Yesterday I sold off the table and chairs that I used to sit on, so I have less and less to get rid of. And less and less things to sit on.

1 comment:

Lo Kelween said...

it's good to look at the brighter sides.

yes, life goes on, that's the most important thing we should bear in mind because we never know when are we leaving this world.