concrete

The word concrete means: constituting an actual thing or instance, also real, perceptible or substantial. The word also means an artificial, stone-like building material made by mixing cement and various aggregates, as sand, gravel, or shale, with water and allowing the mixture to harden. While concrete blocks are an actual thing and are real, perceptible and substantial, the latter meaning is what they are made from and they do carry a substantial amount of weight. Plus the whole following matter turned out to be a concrete proposition.

After several days of not feeling up to doing anything outside, today was the day I finally got things cranked back up. The term ‘today’ is not necessarily relative to the day this missive is sent forth. First job of the day was to unload the concrete blocks out of my truck so it could be used for other purposes. The unloading was quite a job in itself – you might say that I unloaded nearly a half-ton of blocks – one at a time, of course. Afterward the inside of my house called me and I answered by going in to crash a while and have a bite to eat.

The pond behind our house has been below full stage for at least four or five years due to not enough rain and possibly low ground water tables. Several regular rains had started to slowly bring the water level up to within about a foot of overflow. The rain we had some days ago not only brought the level to the overflow, but has caused it to overflow for several days now, which is almost an unheard of thing for this pond since it has hit the overflow very few times in its lifetime and then only briefly.

The Spice and I decided to go for a late afternoon walk just after the sun went down – it was still light enough to see very well. As we walked across the dam of the pond, several geese (Canadian) were swimming on the water – 8 of them and two ducks. These flying swimmers were conversing back and forth in a rather excited manner. At least one of the geese was flying at another one or two in a very threatening manner as though it took exception to these others even being on the planet.

Evidently this one was showing dominance and although it happened before we came by, we saw evidence of some sort of altercation. The leftovers of this was in the form of a fair amount of feathers scattered on the surface in one area of the pond. Had it been humans involved it would have been fisticuffs, but in this case it would have been beak-icuffs – snatching out feathers from the other. The two ducks were around the edges of the action, either staying out of the way or trying to see what it was all about. As the ruckus got more raucous, four of the geese finally took off for another pond.

For sure it was a full fury fowl fracas, flicking fine, fluffy, frangible feathers from fractious, fuming, flying foes in the frenzied, frightful fray. The geese were not good to each other but God is always good to us, even when we don’t deserve it. ec