friday, thirty july: six of pentacles
Twice so far this morning, I’ve seen squirrels in the yard with what seemed like big chunks of food. One ran past the window with something in his mouth that looked to be the size of a wine-bottle cork, which was probably not an accurate impression, but still. A few minutes later I saw a squirrel standing on the fence holding something with both paws. It’s a little backyard mystery. On the one hand, it doesn’t matter all that much; on the other hand, I’m a curious bird. Figuring out small anomalies gives me something to do with my day.
If we rewind this story just about exactly one year, we get to Hurricane Isaias, which brought some pretty wild wind to our part of the country. (Declan and I were actually at the beach–Matt had to work and couldn’t come with us, but I had hit a peak of can’t-deal-with-pandemic-lockdown and rented a tiny vacation apartment in Connecticut on the Long Island Sound for three days. We had an amazing day and a half of tidal-beach exploration and Entemann’s Donuts, and we weathered the storm with board games and more Entemann’s, but the beach cottage lost power and we came home early.) The park near our house lost a few trees, but more relevantly to the squirrel story, the tree in our neighbor’s backyard dropped a really large branch into our yard. Under normal circumstances, we’d have asked the landlord to remove the branch. We planned to do that, but then Declan seemed to enjoy having it around to play with, and we just never got around to having it removed. For the last few months, the branch has been leaning against the fence between yards. It’s cool looking and not in anyone’s way, and a pretty impressive mushroom colony has started growing around the top end.
That turns out to be the answer to the squirrel food question. They’re breaking off big chunks of mushroom from the top of the branch–I watched one shimmy his fat squirrel body up the branch and harvest some mushroom. Nature, my friends, finds a way.
The picture on today’s card is berries glowing on the branches of a leafy plant–apparently it signifies a bountiful harvest, long efforts bearing fruit, and a reminder to face this time of plenty with a spirit of generosity. It’s too much of a stretch, even for me, to draw some connection about generosity towards the squirrels.