of Plumb Blossoms and Chicken Shit

The can is faded and bent from years of scoping nutrients out of ratty old buckets. At one time it had those long skinny french wafer cookies, vanilla ones. Pirouette's from Pepperidge Farm, and they would be an unlikely addition to the pantry nowadays, as much as I like to nibble the bastards.That's the problem with all that engineered food, it's fucking delicious. Those insidious greed holes have studied our lizard brains and learned how to make us want to poison ourselves. It's current contents are much more useful. Pellitized chicken shit. Wonderful stuff, chicken shit, really is amazing for growing things, it rattles around, reeking to high heaven. The can is just about the right size for metering out the fertilizer to the tress. One scoop for smallish trees, two for the bigger ones. I jam a spading fork into he ground and wrench it back and forth, rip a little hole in that rich red soil. Fill it with shit and stomp it shut. Keeps the nitrogen in for better absorption. This process is repeated at semi-regular 3 ft. intervals around all the trees at their drip lines (that's where the rain drips from the outer edge of their branches). An improptu meet of the Husum Hills Gun Club, for the blasting of some 9mm and 22 rounds, a necessary interruption  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, after all. I take the Luger out for the first time in years, it's a little old gun, built for the German war machine, frighteningly accurate. The case has gone moldy though and will need some oil, as will the gun. Then it's back to holes and shit. The wild plumb trees that are scattered around the hill are in full staggering blossom and so fragrant that it makes being covered in fine particles of chicken shit not even the least bit offensive (I imagine this would be highly a subjective statement). As the work day winds down I walk by one of the plumb trees and am caught by the humming vitality of hundreds of honey bees. They are laden with pollen as this last week of stunning sunny days has brought many things to bloom, and the bees aren't missing the opportunity. I watch them for bees are embattled in many places, not here though, no death mist to contend with here.