Squirrel manners

As if I haven’t had a rough enough night, fighting a cold, my breakfast is interrupted by incoherent angry swearing from outside the kitchen window. Two floors up, this is unusual.

Curious, I investigate. The perpetrator is hanging upside-down on the wall outside, looking at something, perhaps a cat, in the bushes below. My visiting squirrel is making angry noises at whatever it is when he or she sees me and climbs easily onto the windowsill.

In between grumbling at the whatever-it-is, she looks at me, scratches her stomach, nibbles at the window frame. Then, crouching ready to spring, she leaps to the nearest twigs and is away, leaving a small poop behind.

I guess I’ll take that as a compliment then… ?

Back to bed, to let my immune system continue its battles.

Pale gold

There is pale gold here, this afternoon, as I sit with fresh tea and biscuits in my flat; early returned from work with a head full of mind-muddling cold.

To the north, the roofscapes of Falkirk and, beyond, the Ochil Hills are modelled in soft yellow-white sunlight and blue-grey shadows. They appear briefly to advance before retreating, slowly, as the intensity of the light is muted by other clouds.

From the east windows are the edges of woodland, tree trunks glowing soft gold and browns amongst green-black masses of leaves. Birds are singing, sounding glad of the respite in the recent freeze.

Sunlight is beginning to shine directly into the flat again after its winter holiday, showing me I must clean the windows again. On Saturday morning it illuminated my breakfast, today it brings an unaccustomed warmth to the clutter of the other bedroom.

Despite the itching, irritating, swollen and congested sensations in my head, I feel a sense of wellbeing ease the heaviness of my eyelids. A sense that spring is just beginning, just beginning, to stir in its sleep, enough to make the buds swell on the branches outside the kitchen window where, a month ago during ice and snow, I left some nuts for a fearless visiting squirrel who leapt across to the thin windowsill from a thin branch and watched me making toast.

Aspirin, sugar and caffeine are doing their work, Time for an early nap, then some food, then more sleep to allow my body’s defence forces deal with the unwelcome intruders.

To you reading this, I wish you health and happiness.

Time for me

to rest and,

perhaps,

dream

of gold.

The Joy of Living

I have to go to work, or I’d write a post inspired by this. Instead, sharing the following. ..

When Timber Makes One Still

The Joy of Living

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“The beauty and charm of the wilderness are his for the asking, for the edges of wilderness lie close beside the beaten roads of present travel…through the northern forests, the home of the giant moose, the forests of fragrant and murmuring life in summer, the iron-bound and melancholy of winter. The joy of living is his who has the heart to demand it”

-Theodore Roosevelt, The Joy of Living

©Tom Gable

©Tom Gable

©Tom Gable

©Tom Gable

©Tom Gable

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