Apple maps

Jul. 28th, 2023 05:03 pm
asakiyume: (shaft of light)
When I came home from Readercon, there was a tornado watch, and so rather than be on the awful interstate between Quincy, MA, and B'town, likely trapped in a traffic jam (they are pretty much a guarantee for this time of the year, traveling between western and eastern Massachusetts) awaiting a funnel of doom, I decided to go home no-highways (which really just means no interstates), aided by my phone. It took me the route I was expecting it would take me: along state highway rt. 9, which runs east-west through the middle of the state. For much of the journey it's scenic towns, and there are plenty of places to stop if you need to shelter from a tornado. And a constant reassuring progression of Dunkin Donuts (it doesn't go through Stow, MA).

So yesterday, having dropped Wakanomori at the airport, I decided to do similar as soon as I escaped the traffic jam surrounding the airport. But this time, maybe because it was rush hour and so rt 9 was also quite thick with traffic, the app directed me north and further north, always managing to inch west too. Are you sure you know where I want to go? --It claimed it did.

mildly entertaining journey )

Anyway, I made it home! And this morning a bobcat walked through my yard, and the two of us exchanged a long and meaningful look.

Also my Tikuna teacher texted me "Guungua choru maune wa cu ñemata," and I understood (almost) the whole thing without her translating,** so life is good. 😁

**siempre estás presente en mi corazón/you're always present in my heart
asakiyume: (glowing grass)
It's a drought here, and there's a water ban. Grass lawns are burned gold except where trees shade them---there they're still green. (I don't have much of a grass lawn: mine is a lot of thyme and clover and hawkweed and sorrel. Where I have grass, it's the same as everyone else's.)

I went for a walk this morning under a drifting gray sky and saw many good things. I didn't have a camera so you'll have to bear with words. I saw the red-winged blackbird royalty, the princes with their scarlet epaulets and gold fringe, and their wives, more drab but just as territory-proud. I saw elderflowers and, on the corner where I always see it at this time of year, tiny bindweed flowers. At the community garden I saw a flock of goldfinches, which my sister says is called a charm--a charm of goldfinches--perching on tomato stakes and then flying off in their rising-dipping flight, like needles through cloth.

Across the street is the highway department, where, at 7 am, they were having, apparently, a convocation of orange Asplundh bucket trucks, maybe/probably to cut tree branches from around utility wires around town. Highway department employees were in fluorescent green t-shirts and jackets, like firefighters. I saw one guy arriving, hurrying out of his car.
"Is it bucket truck day today?" I asked.
"You bet," he said.

Along the way, I saw chipmunks, which dashed off under the Virginia creeper and poison ivy. One was so tiny, the size of a mouse instead of a rat.
"How did you get so tiny?" I asked, and then began thinking about if you could grow small instead of big.

flowers!

Aug. 25th, 2019 01:10 pm
asakiyume: created by the ninja girl (Default)
I keep on meaning to do a real post but work keeps keeping me down. But only four more weeks now, yay!

Anyway, you'll be happy to know that today the cinderblock from last post had two beautiful flower bouquets, sitting on top of it. The rainbow-colored umbrella had blown into the road, so I stopped my car and retrieved it, and doing so, realized I couldn't see any way to pay for the bouquets. There probably is one? I didn't look hard. Or maybe the flowers are being offered for free. (But probably not ... that's the sort of assumption I make that is usually *wrong*).

The following photos are unrelated to the cinderblock, the bouquets, and the umbrella. The first is sunflowers; the second is the dappled path between the sunflowers.

sunflowers

dapples

flowers?

Aug. 17th, 2019 06:13 pm
asakiyume: (glowing grass)
I saw this odd little scene two days running, a very tiny makeshift stand by the side of the road, a rainbow umbrella, a sign, a cinderblock (and probably a moneybox somewhere, but I didn't notice--I was in a car), so I made a cartoon (?) about it:





Flowers: a flexible term!

scarecrows

Aug. 13th, 2018 09:50 pm
asakiyume: (misty trees)
I saw a scarecrow today--I thought it was a person, standing very still. It was a very realistic scarecrow.

Today was also a rainy day, so there were no shadows, no direct light, confusion of air and water as rain misted down, confusion of earth and air too, as hills and trees melted away into clouds. A good day for summoning ghosts . . .

You can do that, when the rain brings ghosts up near the surface of the earth. Sorcerer farmers trap them in old clothes like helium in balloons, and make them wander the fields, scaring away anything that trespasses, until the bright light of an unclouded day frees them.

Yeah, ghost scarecrows only work when the summer is wet. In parched farmlands shriveling under an unrelenting sun, I'm guessing sorcerer farmers rely on phantasmal illusions of sparks and flames to terrify intruders away.

bike ride

Jul. 4th, 2018 02:46 pm
asakiyume: (glowing grass)
Went on a bike ride with Waka in the sensual hot 'n' humid, where you really feel each patch of shade, like you're diving into cold water, and then into the heat again, and in all these places, so many smells--the smell of baking soil, of flowers and black raspberries and pine needles, also the smell of creosote by the train tracks, and the smell of swampy still water, and here and there the smell of garbage cooking in the sun.

We passed a father having a picnic with his daughter out the shaded door to their ground-floor apartment. There was a blanket: dad was sitting on this, very still--I thought he was meditating at first--and there were many small bowls of things to eat. On the threshold of the door was the daughter, three or four, with wild curly reddish brown hair, not quite ready maybe to be lured out.

This dramatic wildflower turns out to be butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa). How pretty!

butterfly weed

And on the trip, there was some underpass art...

underpass on Northampton MA bike trail
underpass on Northampton MA bike trail
underpass on Northampton MA bike trail

The other side was a celebration of bees and beekeeping:

underpass on Northampton MA bike trail

Also on the ride, a trailside water tap, where you could get a drink of water, and air pump, in case your tires were low, courtesy of a car dealer; also a scrapyard with the cars almost lost in wildflowers and tall grass.

Song sparrows, catbirds, and swifts were all singing out. At the place we stopped to buy a drink and a bite to eat, the woman behind the counter had a tattoo of utility polls and the swooping wires strung between them, with birds on them.
asakiyume: (glowing grass)
Took a break from work to go out and pick some black raspberries. There was a thunderstorm this morning, but now the sun is shining and the wind is blowing. I've let raspberry canes grow wherever they come up, and there are some right along the side of the house, in the sun. So many are ripe, and warm. Picking them, with the sun on my back and a breeze blowing, and a train calling in the distance, I really think: it's okay to be mortal and to die if there are moments like this--sweet berries, breezes, leaves and ferns, sunlight and shadows, a train whistle.
asakiyume: (glowing grass)






There are many farmers of Polish heritage in the area. Sapowsky Farms is within biking distance and on my way home on volunteering days.



Here is bad news--and good news--concerning asparagus:



And for something completely different, here is a tree that grows dust masks. They look like single-breast bras, don't they? People who want to do some illegal exploration in the abandoned building (and others like it) seen in the background can harvest a mask, so as not to breath in asbestos.



And my music for today is "Carmelita," by Warren Zevon. It's a song I'd never heard before yesterday, when I was waiting for a long freight train to go by. On one car was scrawled

Carmelita hold me tighter I think I'm going down

It sounded like it came from something, and when I looked, I found it was a (slightly misquoted) line from "Carmelita":

Carmelita hold me tighter
I think I'm sinking down
And I'm all strung out on heroin
on the outskirts of town


I wonder if the person who wrote it really was all strung out on heroin. Since my area's currently in a heroin epidemic, it seems possible. Then again, the freight train could have come from somewhere far away.





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