July 19, 2017 –The branch that moved.

        As I mentioned a few days ago, snakes, snakes, every where . . . and the snake saga continues.

        Early in the cool of the morning yesterday I wandered around and picked up 15 minutes’ worth of downed limbs and large twigs to toss on the pickup load of downed limbs I’d loaded two days before.  I pick up the twigs that are too thick to dissolve during a years’ composting.  Due to the high winds with all these rains we seem to have lots of downed limbs.  Every four or five weeks I fill the pickup truck and we haul them off to the landfill and pay for the dumping.

        You would think that hauling off all these downed limbs and not creating “snake piles, i.e., brush piles” where snakes want to hunt or multiply . . . we would not see as many snakes as we have this year.

        But, this was a double snake day.  Possibly due to so much rain they are moving up from the Kudzu patch to find warm wet grass to release their skins so they can shed and get bigger and bigger to scare the wits out of me or they’ve heard that my back yard gardens are extremely beautiful this year due to the rains – who knows.

        My husband was mowing the back lawn and he made a turn on his sit down lawnmower and slowed down to reach down and pick up what he thought was a fallen limb.  Just as he stopped the mower the “limb” moved and he discovered it was his old friend – or what he thought was his old friend the snake that had gotten itself tangled up in the sweet pea netting that he later did the Good Samaritan thing by cutting it free.  Of course, in the process he also chopped all the blooming sweet peas down.  I can’t exactly praise him much about his being so good to all of God’s creatures and killing off my flowers at the same time.

        When the limb – err – snake moved, he ushered it with the lawn mower back to the kudzu property line.  But, it seems to have a run of our yard any time it pleases.

        Less than half hour later I was walking up to my “French” bench under the Bradford pears and knowing I had picked up all the downed limbs from the days of heavy rain and wind just that morning,  I pause a moment to see if what I thought was a limb was a limb, but it was another snake.  Not a black snake but an immature black rat snake coming out of adolescence into adult hood – the white patches still visible, but fading.

        I stopped dead in my tracks – good thing – I was about 4 feet away before I noticed it.  It noticed me too.  A completely different demeanor it had from our often seen black snake. I backed away after I gave it a good study.

        I turned and hailed down the husband, but, alas, it had slithered away before he could scrutinize it.

        Needless to say, I did not go to my “French” bench to jot in my journal.  I camped out in the house instead as my back was still in fright spasms.

        I put my nose back in Patrick Taylor’s book entitled The Wily O’Reilly.  OH, what a treasure.  Essay format of a few pages each of little “stories” or “events” of an Irish Doctor in a village called Ballybuckelbo, Ireland.   Amusing, delightful and a good read.

        It is the back story of the best-selling series starting with Irish Country Doctor followed by Irish Country Village, etc.,

        I found it charming.  If you are looking for an amusing summer read that takes you to another location – try one of Patrick Taylor’s books.  I think you will love it.