Night

The air is cool. It is cool for August..it feels more like late September or October. The leaves have started to fall, their colour just beginning to fade. I hacked away at the plants today in the front beds. It took all my energy to hack the sturdy gray branches down, and uncover the mulched earth. It felt good for the first while..I had an almost manic energy..leaving my kids to their own self-management so I could separate plants that had taken over their space and had already begun the journery toward destruction by choking the plants around them including our helpless blue spruce. After awhile, I felt drained and I hardly looked forward to hauling the twigs and branches into pails and bins. I feel somewhat guity thinking back at the holly I managed to attack and dislimb. I chopped it down to its exposed roots. It seemed to make sense then..it had grown wild and taken over everything else..but there was something nice in the way that it laced everything in its corner and ..beyond. But I managed to strip it bare of any life..I don't really know what I was thinking. It was green and ornamental and now I sadly miss it. --Ella is sleeping soundly next to me. Ross has gone upstairs and is getting ready to retire for the night. I'm sleepy but I can't sleep. The cars seem to punctuate the silence in the air. I liked it when we first moved to this neighbourhood. Now I dream of Thornbury. Of its nightime silence..its curtain of stars, the bay out back..melting into a sea of sky. They cove bringing refuge to its sleepy swans. But I'm here..and this is still a good place to be. I don't live in the shadowy, depressing blue house anymore. I live here with the pine trees, and the japanese maple, and the other maples and the cedars and locust tree. With the flowers that come back to greet me each year, the birds that move back to make families and build homes for their families. The backyard bunny that likes to hide among the hostas..the chipmunk that likes to sit under out picnic table. The flowering hostas that smell like heaven at this time of year. And all the windows in our house that let us look out onto the gardens.