Day 57: Stupefaction

I’ve been keeping a five-year journal—just a sentence or two each day—to aid my memory. For any given date, I can see what happened in the years before. This is an excerpt from my entry for May 12 of last year, during one of Ember’s sleepovers at my house:

When I complained that my hair looked dorky, Ember said, “It’s still you.” 

Profound wisdom from a then-eight-year-old: my hair doesn’t define me. I must also remember that when I look in the mirror and can no longer see my face for all the greying mane. I’m still in here.

Do you recall a few days ago when I was telling you about my extreme, profound, crippling boredom in this isolation, and wondered if there’s a word in English for it? I asked you to complete this parallel relationship:

drizzle : hurricane :: boredom : _________

What my beloved friend Teejie just proposed gets the closest so far: stupefaction.

In my backyard there’s a giant English laurel behind whose broad leaves the squirrels hide to strategize before mounting an attack on my baby peaches. They did it again this morning. I was tired of just looking on with my camera as they thumbed their twitchy little noses at me, so I chased them off, but not before they’d pilfered another tiny peach. Right after, I had an inspiration: what if I chopped the bush way down to the fence line, to remove their cover? This afternoon my gardener, José, arrived to mow my weeds, and I asked his opinion of my clever plan. He looked at me mutely as though he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Uh… or is that a stupid idea?” I added. “Well, yes,” he said, finally. He pointed out that the same bush that provides camouflage for rodents also helps block the view into my neighbor’s house. To the squirrels’ delight, I opted for privacy. He called me a while later to make sure my feelings weren’t hurt by his honesty. To the contrary.

José also suggested a possible solution not only to the aphids that are curling and devouring the leaves on the peach tree, but possibly to the squirrels decimating the fruit. His grower friends in the Central Valley have tried this trick and say it works: in winter, spread chicken manure around the base. Apparently neither insect nor sciurid likes the smell. I won’t either. But I’ll give it a try.