Where have all the flowers gone?

Not much has changed in the century since the lines above were written; somehow I don’t expect Sandburg would be overly surprised.  Government has just gotten better at shredding paper and paper trails and wiping hard drives.  We have two paper shredders in the office in which I work—I ordered them. 

 

Just got back from buying $200.00-worth of groceries.  A lot for one person but I’ve only shopped once in the last two months.  Possible when one makes one’s own bread, uses frozen juice concentrate and is satisfied with powdered coffee-white; and has a deep freeze full of frozen meals.  In my travels I’ve been amused to see that there are two pigs running for office in Oakville—a stoat and a hogg.  Snickered when I noted it was deemed obligatory to note on my container of pre-washed mixed salad greens that they contained no spinach. 

 

I should apologize for neglecting my few readers.  First I went back to work the first of October; then I caught the virus my fellow workers’ kids brought home from school and their parents were kind enough to share around the office.  Life has been hand to mouth for the last month.  Where did summer go?  We had a few flurries flying in the air around noon on Thursday, the 2^nd, but it melted on contact—nothing to match the permanent cover just north of the Niagara Escarpment or the accumulation already present in places like Calgary.  We have, however, had two vicious storms with wind-driven rain gusting to 100 Km/Hr and more rain during daylight hours than I’ve seen in over a decade.  Miserable weather to be a letter carrier. 

 

I’ve just finished reading Carl Sandburg and will move on to the simplicity of E. J. Pratt.  When I read I tend to suffer from the heavy-eyelid phenomena.  I’ve been struggling to keep up with my iTunes podcasts lest the downloads eat up all the space on my hard drive.  I’ve been languidly picking away at housecleaning—at least bachelors can always feel a sense of accomplishment when they clean those forgotten corners.  I’m still ignoring live TV programming in favour of recorded DVD’s.  At the moment my computer is playing Luke Doucet’s Broken (and other rogue states).