My Mind is a Bad Neighborhood

....and I shouldn't go out alone in it. That is true. My mind does tell me stories and the stories evoke feelings. Frontal lobe creates, limbic system participates. Two garden examples. Recently I was awakened by lots of dull clunks on the dock nearby. Thinking it was inconsiderate folks infiltrating the usually quiet neighborhood, I began to fume and devise short( but eloquent) speeches of annihilation. The second night it happened I lunged for the door around midnight only to have ROF tell me it was shrimpers emptying cast net catches on the dock. Suddenly the same clunks were music to my ears. The clunks meant the shrimp were running; my beloved St. Johns River was not dead.Folks were gathering local food.

Fast forward one week. I walk out onto the river lawn to admire my lush, velvety rye grass carpet. Rye is a grass that keeps the B&B's winter lawn green. It caresses the grandkids' toes and requires nothing of me in the way of water and fertilizer.

Horror of horrors, there were lots of squirrel excavations in the rye lawn.Tunnels and domes existed where there had been flat grass. I filled and flattened each one. The next day there were more. I began to create stories, remembering my father, the Captain's hatred of the "furry rats." I remembered how they gnawed the soy bean covered electronics on his beloved Cadillac and how one had even taken down NASDAQ.

For three days I filled and flattened and fumed. The fourth day, I stormed out and began to fill the holes once more. Suddenly the story of the Chilean miners floated past on my mind's marque. At first I was puzzled, then it hit me. The squirrels were miners indeed. I was filling each sandy tunnel with richer soil than they had excavated, thereby enriching the lawn. The "furry rats" provided were a free lawn service specializing in aeration.

Playing the revised squirrel saga in my brain,the veins went down in my neck and my hands ceased their death grip on the shovel handle. The squirrels were working for me not against me. My mind's "bad neighborhood" had gentrified.