Magnolia Trees and Squirrels

A magnolia tree was my gift to my mother on Mother's Day many, many years ago. My mother died thirty years ago so that tree must be at least thrity five years old. It has grown to a size that would challenge any maple. The branches are arranged in such a way that it makes a good tree to climb. One can only dream of climbing that tree. My dad doesn't want the limbs broken so kids are discouraged from attempting the climb. When I stopped at Dad's on Saturday, the tree was full of burgeoning buds and promises to give us a great show this year if all goes well and the creek doesn't rise. One never knows about spring. It can be fickle. There is frost, hard winds, hard rains and hail. It does seem that we may get the show before any of those negative natural events occurs. It's warm presently and will be warm the next few days; according to the weather man who is not always dependable. The tree will burst forth soon. When I view the beauty in that tree each year, I am reminded of my mom, her love for floral beauty, her love for me and mine for her. I lost her way too young. She was fifty seven, I was thirty five. I know God makes no mistakes but I have missed her over the years. One's life goes on after the loss of a close loved one but there is always a vacuum. I think I have written before about a school mate in a class one year younger than me whose mother is still alive today. The mother was a good friend of my mom and I remember spending some Sunday evenings together as famiies. I can't help but feel a bit of longing for my mother when I see this school mate walk with her mom into church or into the school where our grandchildren attend. Indeed they are blessed to have had each other so long.

Long change of subject. Kendra called while I was keying in the above paragraph. I paused my effort to talk awhile. Suddenly, I heard a terrible noise....a car running into a pole? an explosion of sorts? What happened? I walked outside, phone in hand, and walked to the road...looked both ways and saw nothing unusual. Well, almost nothing unusual.. What was unusual was that two of our neighbors were also out looking up and down the road. The question to one another...."You heard it, too...what do you think that was?" The thought in everyone's mind was a car crashed into a pole. We listened awhile for sirens....nothing. I posed the question to Kendra that I wondered if we would ever find the source of the sound. After I was in the house awhile and wanted to resume my blog writing, I found the electric was off. So to the neighbors I went to see if they had juice. Yes, they did...so we were the only ones affected. When Ken came home from town about the same time as all this was going on he instructed me to call REMC, the power company. They took the info and said they would alert their man on the truck and no, no other people had called with a problem. Ken went to the back of our lot where there is a pole with a transformer. He said the fuse was tripped. Then he asked for a set of binnoculars. Why is it that one can never find those when one needs them. Either that or one forgets to take them when one can really use them. UGH. We couldn't find them for the moment but Ken said he thought he could see a squirrel lying on the top of the transformer. The man of the hour arrives and confirms Ken's diagnosis. He took a longggggggg pole and flipped the squirrel off the top...the squirrel arrived on the ground with a loud thump. He was a big sucker and never knew what hit him. Poor thing. Following that, the man installed a new fuse and we were with power once again. All of this happened within forty minutes. Lots happens in short periods of time.