Lilacs & Lawn Tractors

Yesterday was a day of glorious spring sunshine with a cooling breeze that wafted the heavy perfume of the lilacs in through the kitchen windows.  Perfection.  The lilacs are drawing butterflies of several varieties, like jewels pinned on a lovely gown.  After hours of mowing, I needed to stand for awhile and so pulled all the weeds in front of the porch and up the walkway.  (Should have done that before taking the photo.)  After that, I needed to sit for awhile.  I left the pulled weeds in neat piles, planning to dispose of them later, but when I went out again, the free-range chickens had scattered weeds everywhere as they searched for the goodies they were sure I'd hidden just for them.  That'll teach me to put off a chore.  "If you don't have time to do a job right the first time, do you have time to do it over?"

While mowing, I scared a baby ground squirrel that had been playing in the woodpile by the clothes line, and a mother squirrel stuffing her nest with dried grasses out on the west point.  Years ago I read The Stand by Stephen King, in which he referred several times to a book called Watership Down by Richard Adams.  I'd never seen a writer tout another author's book, and wondered if it was a real book or just an interesting device for King's story.  When I found Watership Down, I had to read it to see what was so great that another author would mention it...and found a delightful story in which all the characters were rabbits.  Adams had created a language, complete with glossary, for these creatures (a la Klingon in Star Trek), and a word we in the family adopted was "hrududu."  A hrududu is anything mechanized, a car, truck, tractor, etc., that made a loud noise and frightened the rabbits.  As I zoomed toward these squirrels, I could hear them screaming, "The hrududu is coming!  The hrududu is coming!" 

Walking out at sundown to put the kids to bed, the smell of new-mown greens and still-warm lilacs filled the air.  It doesn't get much better.