Nature around me

There is a Lebanese neighbor who abuts my south side property, half way. She has a garage against which she has a Concord Grape vine, primarily so that she can harvest grape leaves to use them for stuffing with rice, lamb and spearmint. She is a widow in her mid-eighties who no longer does any yard work herself. At the back of her lot, a junk tree has shot up, probably seeded there by birds. In just a couple of years it has reached more than 25 feet in the air. Like a child who sees a tree and must climb it, so this grapevine leaped and twirled its way high, plunging and curling down from its 18 foot high and hanging down freely below the lower limbs.

Warmed by the sun on the tree, now taller than the garage vines which face north, this grapevine has lolled in the summer sun, grown by leaps and bounds, and has rewarded the birds with at least a bushel of plump. purple grapes. They are too high up for a human to reach without a ladder; my neighbor has no inclination to do that. I have had the pleasure of listening to happy birds chirping as they glut themselves on the ripe, sweet grapes.



All this is taking place outside my computer room window. It has made me realize how little I have appreciated Nature in my little postage stamp-sized lot. The realization reminded of one of the Disney, early documentaries called Nature's Half Acre. Walking around to the front of the house I see one of the Holly bushes, bright with red berries, a harbinger of winter to me.


How much I have missed when my eyes are looking inside my head instead of at the world around me.