I honestly have no idea how I can have been at the computer since five-thirty and watched the night be overwhelmed by the assault of dawn, and still have not done a damned thing.
I will not include the several streams of invective on everything that is going on, since none of us can do much about Chechen sleeper cells, North Korean missiles on the march, nor the vulnerable critical national infrastructure.
Maybe it is the existence of sleeper cells on my own property that had my attention. Heckle the Miracle Cat is back after a full winter underground. She is a bit skittish now, but I am sure with the resumption of a reliable food stream, she will be caterwauling around the residence again in no time.
In my feeble defense, The Russians bushwhacked me last night- not their fault, as we have not completely worked out the bell signals.
When I dragged my go-bag in from the car, and the 42 Airline mini-bottles of liquor a Hindu flight attendant of my acquaintance stashed with me- I signaled my presence at Refuge Farm with a brisk professional grasp on the bell-pull: “ding ding, ding ding” Arriving signal.
He gave back one-and-a-half bells, a signal with which I was unfamiliar, though it might have meant something on the Protected Cruiser Aurora in St. Petersburg, back in the day.
I shrugged and went into town on a gardening errand in course of which I was earnestly counseled by an avowed naked gardener at the Big Box Lowe’s not to worry about the tomatoes for a week or more- the soil is still too cold, regardless of what my neighbors are doing, and that is a lot.
The rule of thumb, as I understand it now, is that the time is right when you can work the soil naked. That was somehow simultaneously comforting and disturbing, and I put off the issue of the tomatoes to the next visit.
I drove the Bluesmobile slowly back the scenic way to take in a sample of Culpeper Remembers, the eighth iteration of a look back at the Revolution and the Civil War right here in our Fair City. I cruised slowly past the Civil War Re-enactors campsite in back of the Museum, and saw that the Confederates had abandoned the campfire and joined a wedding party on the lawn at one of the old mansions up the street.
Gray uniforms and hoop-skirts. For an instant it was 1863, the last year the Army of Northern Virginia controlled the town. I contemplated trying to get a picture without wrecking the car and could not.
I returned to the farmhouse with the clock approaching the cocktail hour, and succumbed to the desire to sit out back, look at the pastures and review the week’s Clarion-Bugle. It is unseasonably cold this weekend.
I had switched the furnace over to “chill” last week and back to “heat” it came. But in the lengthening shadows, I felt a peace, of sorts, and read the paper for the minutia of life that is not played out with the national news as an intrinsic part of personal life.
Whereupon the Russians swooped into the gravel driveway with Croftburn Farms organic free-range chicken slow-cooked with sweet and savory spices from the Caucuses. Natasha, after all, is from the Crimea, and much of this external news is personal for her. She is a proud Russian and has no truck with either Communists or extremist Muslims.
Mattski is of the view that this is all a trial run for other things, and while there is room for disagreement, the consensus was that it was better to be in the country than the city as this plays out.
It was a hit-and-run dinner, since they had been working hard in the expanded garden all day, and I at least had thought about working. Around the big table on the deck we worked on bell signals, among other things, and then the underground cell here in Culpeper that is going to erupt soon.
It has been seventeen long years since the red-eyed evil looking bastards went to ground. They are expected back soon, and we have to be ready.
They are anarchists, the little bastards, and crawl out of the ground once every 17 years to sing, mate and get eaten like crunchy, winged Milk Bones by canines like Biscuit, the Wonder Spaniel. The cicadas have no discernable political agenda, though I am alert for evidence of one, but let’s face it: they are implacable and they will be back.
They will join stink-bugs and Asian lady bugs, along with the usual gnats and mosquitoes and hornets in making life interesting here at Refuge Farm. Unlike cicadas, stink bugs can damage crops, feeding off fruits and vegetables, and may be targeting my so-far virtual tomatoes. “They won’t kill the plant,” the naked gardener informed me, “but they will damage mature fruit.”
We have got some damn bugs here. Oh, that is was the previous natural order. The Russians are adding 6,000 honey bees today. The bees arrived by UPS, not quite hive-ready in bags, getting to know their queens and each other in preparation for transferal to the white boxes Mattski has prepared.
None of these guys are dangerous, and they do little damage that I can remember from their last emergence from deep cover in 1996. The Clarion-Bugle article helped me out: the seventeen-year variant is a direct relative of the common annual cicada, but smaller and much more colorful. They are shorter, black-bodied, red-eyed and have orange legs, not unlike some of the political operatives back up North.
The key is the noise, which can rise like the crashing of surf on rocks. The males vibrate and make the noise to call the females, there is a thrumming response like at some of the younger-themed clubs on Wilson Boulevard, they mate and the females will lay eggs in small twigs in trees, and then they all die. The eggs hatch and the nymphs crawl into the ground to nap for nigh onto two decades.
To me, it seems a little anticlimactic, but I am a mammal and funny that way, I guess. I am glad Heckle survived the winter. I am hoping she will have all the red-eyed snacks she can handle soon.
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com