I too am not a bit tamed.

All the rest of you can just go on and feel envious, because I have a houseguest and he is très magnifique, as many of you know first-hand. Already tonight we have caused some more-than-sidelong, more-than-passing stares from students of mine we've passed on the street, for whom the sight of me walking with (!) a man (!) is not only unprecedented but also, I suspect, entirely unexpected. One student actually looked him over from head to toe, moving her head as she did so. Unsubtle in their friendly surprise they sometimes are not.

Today saw me completing one of my least favorite of tasks, lawn-mowing. But mowing the lawn enabled me to get a different perspective on my yard's flowers, on a day that began with another of those shock-sightings of feeding deer (in this season, munching on daffodil greens under the backyard cherry tree's hot pink). And somehow that different perspective helped me overlook the fact that my hands tingled for an hour after I finished the job. So:


The best part of mowing the lawn, though, was the smell. Wild chives have been growing in the yard all through the spring; I recognize their tall, straight spears, like grass but more so, and as I ran over one clump after another, an oniony scent filled the air, filled up the backyard like a deep light pool, swept over the red mower plowing through the green grass, swept over the woman in the green shorts and the red shirt, kept sweeping and filling as the sun hung high, hours before it was time to gild and fall.