Son et lumière

On Saturday afternoon and into the evening I could hear, from over the hill, the shrill happy sounds of teenage females: A Party. The cadence of the group sound was, at times, that of a chant, leading me to think of a roving gang of cheerleaders. Other times the wind carried to me the delightedly manic screaming that I associate with youth-in-swimming-pools. I turned toward the sounds, frowning slightly in concentration. BobbiAnn and Don have two daughters, one about the right age to have friends that would make those sounds . . . that carry across a couple of miles, across the hills and valleys, through the leafy trees . . . the same way coyote yips and howls do. About the same tones, as well.

The article that goes with this picture is a hoot.

I do not recall ever being one of those yippy little girls, abandoned to joy, carefree, confident in happiness. 

I am glad that there are such children. 

I am glad they were miles away.

solar lights somewhat similar to mine on a driveway completely dissimilar to mine

Last winter I shopped on eBay for solar lights, the kind you stick in the ground, unnoticeable in daylight, that come on all by themselves (the clever little things!) when it gets dark. I bought some at Walmart a few years ago and I liked them: they made me feel like Christmas in July, or as if I had fairies stationed around the yard. They were little decorative miracles of thrift to me. That first batch has worn out now and I wanted more. It was off-season and I got a good price on two cases of them. A couple of months ago, when the weather got warm enough that I could envision being outdoors after dark, I broke open the cartons where they were stored in the barn. After stabbing the copper-finished lights' little posts into the ground at intervals of three-four feet among the shrubs along the front of the house, I still had most of the second carton left over. I put a few at the sides of the two walkways off the patio in the rear of the house. Still, many left. I suspect the batteries in the things will wear out whether they're used or not, so I scouted for more nighttime accent light spots. Two in the daylilies at the far end of the front yard stone wall, two behind the front yard birches, two behind the back yard birches. Still . . . a layer of lights in the carton. Wandering around with as many of the fixtures as I could carry, I spied . . . crannies . . . in the driveway side of the stone wall, and discovered that those little holes were just the right depth and diameter for the stems of the lights. The effect is stunning.

I expect that some night an inexperienced pilot of a small airplane might mistake our front yard for a landing strip.