Squirrels like Easter too

Sunday morning. Easter Sunday morning. It’s a beautiful morning. I think it might be in the 50s although I’m feeling even warmer in tee-shirt, hoodie and red & black checked flannel overshirt. I’m sitting in a lawn chair next to our backyard firepit, still damp from melting snow, with my feet up on one of half-dozen stumps arranged around the pit. The stumps came from a huge willow tree that had blown over in my parent’s back yard during one of this past winter’s heavy snowstorms. My Dad and I finished chain-sawing the tree just last week and hauled it all over here to our yard in several wagon-loaded trips. We now have a big pile of firewood and these few stumps to sit on around the firepit.

So, my feet rest upon the heaviest stump while the pre-noon sun warms the left side of my face and makes me squint into the screen of the laptop upon which I’m typing. I can smell that lovely, reassuring aroma of freshly cut timber tinged with machinery oil that always reminds me of my Grandfather’s workshop. In his pre-retirement life he was a lumberman, farmer and carpenter. He used to “cut wood” in the 40 acre woodlot behind his house. A lot of wood; several cords each fall to heat the house through the winter months.

There’s a squirrel in the tree above me making his own familiar noise as he urgently gnaws on a nut. I imagine that he might be Rocky, our pet squirrel of a couple years ago, but I know that that’s probably unlikely. He’s reclined, belly down, on a limb pointed in my direction, watching me as he works on the nut. I wave and make kissing sounds at him and he stops gnawing for just a couple seconds, looking at me blankly and (I imagine) thinking, “What?” with an attitude of irritation more than as an actual question.

I’m really just wasting a little time right now as I wait for Kim to finish getting ready this morning and come outside to take a short walk around the neighborhood with me. I’d rather ride bike together, but her bike has been in the shed all winter and the tires are flat. So we’ll take a walk instead. It sounds like she might be ready to go now, as I hear her telling the girls that we’ll be back shortly. Hope you all have a very pleasant Easter Sunday. Be sure to wave and blow kisses at any squirrels you see.