Distractions

Last night when I was about to get supper ready, through my open kitchen window I heard a lot of clucking and squawking, like an episode of Foghorn Leghorn when the chicken hawk gets in the henhouse. Our neighbor kid raises chickens, so first I tried to look out the window, then I went outside and to the west side of the house to try to get a better look. I wasn't completely sure where he even has his chicken coop, so I didn't know where to look.

I did not see any predator making off with a domestic fowl in its maw, but I did notice (a) how well the veronica is growing as a groundcover and (b) that a few weeds were sticking up out of the veronica. So I started to pull a few and went up the stairs pulling weeds for a while. Then I remembered I was going to make supper, so I went back in the house.

Reminds me of a story my mom tells about my flower-loving grandma (who was her mother-in-law), how my grandma put a roast in a pan on the stove, then went out to her garden. After a while, my mom, who was staying there, became concerned that the roast would burn, so she tended to the pot. It was another twenty minutes or half hour before my grandma ran into the house, having just remembered the roast. When I knew that grandma, when she was older, I was aware that she frequently had to buy new tea kettles because she would put the water on to boil and go out to her garden for a moment. She would return much later to find the kettle had boiled dry then melted on the hot stove.