Fading sunflower. I think it’s so beautiful.

Last Rose of Sharon. Despite the deer chomping on most of the buds, I did get about 6 flowers. Next year: more. And the bush will be protected.

If you follow me on Instagram, you already know about our ‘adventure’ yesterday. And by adventure, I mean an oh-my-god adventure.

I had been feeling out of sorts and edgy yesterday given the state of this country. At about 2 pm, I decided to take a little walk in our woods. I asked Don if he wanted to come along and he said yes. We did the usual – we took the main path that starts over by the shed. I was in the lead. We chatted about the vegetation and almost stopped to sit in the ‘park’ but decided not to. As we neared the first curve in the path, I looked to the right in the direction of a clearing that is right next to our property. We walk over there fairly frequently. It’s full of long grass, etc., but there are no trees in the clearing. Anyway, I looked over there and saw a black bear. He was probably 100 feet from us. It took me a moment to realize it was really a bear and then I alerted Don. He finally saw it. A big black bear on all fours. We stopped, mesmerized. The bear lifted his/her head and sniffed the air. Several times. He was picking up our scent. I started to walk back toward the entrance, telling Don we had to get out of there. Don clapped a couple of times to scare him off. He wasn’t scared. In fact, he took a couple of steps in our direction.

We left. Very quickly.

We were sure he/she had already taken off and we were fascinated by the unreality of what we saw, so we waited a bit, I grabbed our cowbell so we could make noise, and – yes, I know you think we’re crazy – we went back to the path. I think we were still stunned by what we’d seen and we also wanted to finish our walk. Sure enough, there was no sign of him. Sigh of relief.

We made the turn to the left on the path and headed toward Maple Grove. Don heard a sound, something that made him look back, and there was the bear.

Oh my god.

The bear was right at the edge of our property, still on our neighbor’s property, but nearer to us. And he was staring at us. I didn’t sense any aggression, but he was intently watching us. This time he was about 75 feet away. Not very far. As we stood there, frozen, he took a couple of steps toward us again. Oh boy. I said something like “Let’s get the hell out of here” to Don. We didn’t run, but we moved very quickly, down the path, through the back forty and into the house. The bear could have covered that 75 feet in a second.

Once in the house, we were feeling a strange mix of adrenaline, euphoria, and flat-out fear. I’ve never seen a bear that close before, not even in a zoo. His head was HUGE. I mean, unbelievable!

Needless to say, we stayed in the house until I ventured out to water the garden a few hours later. The entire time I watered, I kept looking up at the woods, even though the chances of a bear emerging from the woods in the daytime were almost nil.

By the time the end of the evening came around, it was really hitting us. We had been very, very close to a big black bear and that bear warned us off. Twice. I wonder if there were cubs nearby. Black bears don’t attack very often, but if they feel threatened, they do.

Holy crap.

As Don said, and I quote, “The sensation of wonder, mystical connection, and soiling yourself.”

I concur.

It was scary as hell, but in the middle of it all we were simply mesmerized. In fact, after the whole thing ended, Don had an urge to go back there. That’s the draw; you’re so fascinated that you want to see it again. Needless to say, I disabused him of that notion immediately.

The bear was magnificent. Truly stunning.

But I don’t want to run into him again.

You might remember that I saw a big black bear walking across the top of the back forty a few years ago. Again, I was frozen, but that time I was standing by my car and the bear didn’t even notice me.

And our neighbors have seen mama bears and cubs. That happened last year, I think.

Yesterday was such an intense day. We were finishing our deductions trying to get them to our accountant by the end of the day, Don was dealing with the ramifications of turning down an audition for a small, low budget film because he doesn’t feel safe doing that yet and wrestling with the guilt of turning it down. We had a long talk about that. Driving to a set north of us, coming home at night, possibly endangering me…we just had to admit that since film is barely starting up and we have no sense of whether safety protocols will be successful or not, we’d rather wait another month at least. But if you’re an actor, you always feel you should audition, hence the guilt.

And then the bear.

We would like a quiet day today.

Stay safe.

Happy Tuesday.

I made the choice not to go on Twitter yesterday. So I remained relatively calm. But near dinner time, Don came to me because he had been doing the opposite, reading too much news, and he needed calming down. So then I got stressed. And so it goes.

It’s a battle, isn’t it? How to stay informed yet maintain a healthy distance. There’s so much going on, the devastating fires, the hurricane headed toward Mississippi and Louisiana, shootings, protests, OM holding indoor rallies in a state that has prohibited them, (we won’t go into his vile speech.) I’m sure I’ve missed something. As my friend Caroline, who is Australian and was in the cast of Anastasia  says, I can’t watch the news from America. It’s imploding.

My anxiety is rearing its ugly head again.

So I took a walk around the property yesterday afternoon, taking photos along the way. I’ll share them with you this week. It’s a good reminder that taking photos of nature calms me down.

The coleus is sending up purple flowers.

I counted 5 or 6 orb weavers.

The limelight hydrangea is turning pink.

Our monarch chrysalis is still intact, still green. We’re coming up on 2 weeks since I discovered it hanging from the bottom of the birdbath. That will be on Thursday. But it very well might have been there for a few days before that. So I go out there and check on it several times a day. When it begins to turn dark, the monarch will be getting ready to emerge. I sure hope we can sit out there on the funky patio and watch the whole thing. Wouldn’t that be amazing?

Stay safe.

Happy Monday.

Our search for more of the doll/figurine produced exactly nothing. I keep reminding Don that early spring is a great time to find things. There’s not a lot of vegetation yet and bits and bobs come to the surface as the ground thaws.

We invited Rick and Doug over for an impromptu socially distanced get-together yesterday afternoon. Don knew just the spot; Maple Grove (a clearing he created) up in our woods. He carried our four vintage white chairs up there and then I helped him arrange them at a healthy social distance.

You can see them off in the distance.

To orient you – you can see the path on the left that ends in our neighbor’s meadow. The stump on the right was cut from our fallen maple.

We wore masks, we talked for two hours – it was heaven. I really miss those talks with our dear friends. And oh, how I wanted to hug them! I miss hugging, though Don and I hug a lot, thank goodness. But my natural instinct is to embrace my friends and family and that’s a no-no right now.

Rick and Doug. They brought their own beverages.

It was just what we needed, time with our friends up in the woods. The great thing about having it there is that the noise from the road is much less intrusive, though our neighbors were using their chainsaw to cut up all the trees that the utility company dumped on their lawn. Still, it wasn’t bad at all.

As Doug said, it would be a great place to read. There was a lovely breeze and it was quiet.

Why didn’t I think of that?

Anyway, after wondering what to do with that area, we now see that we need more of the vintage white chairs and we’re going to place them in Maple Grove. Next year. Or maybe this year if we come across some!

Seeing that splash of white in the woods is really neat.

I’m reading All the Devils are Gone  by Louise Penny. I’m deliberately reading slowly so I can savor it, knowing I’ll have to wait another year for her next book.

A photo from the day I met her at a book signing in NYC.

I was thinner then. Sigh.

I’d say my hair had less gray but truthfully, there’s still a fair amount of brown in my hair. It just looks different according to the light. Overhead lights and sunlight makes it look very gray – almost white. It’s ‘evolving.’

Louise’s longtime editor, Hope Dellon, was sitting right in front of me at that event and we became Twitter pals. Hope passed away several months ago. I knew she had been ill; nonetheless, I was shocked when I realized she had died. Louise speaks movingly about Hope in her Acknowledgements. Make sure you read about her. She was something else.

Last, but not least, Kathy sent us a little package which Don picked up at the post office the other day.

Whoo hoo! We LOVE them!

Thank you so much, Kathy!

Stay safe.

Happy Sunday.