Thursday. Either Zeno's healing has been exceptional, or the injury wasn't as bad as I'd feared. It's a cool 56 degrees, with both wool sweater and handknit wool shawl, I feel pleasantly warm. Zeno practically sprints down the driveway! Still, I'll not push this walk too far. We head to the west, and walk as far as 50th, before turning back towards Simpson.

There we meet a friend and her slightly chubby Rottweiler. As we walk, several times Tiger and my friend's dog get into little shenanigans--lunging after cats. We speak to our dogs, and they mind. We speak about some practical considerations coming up in our lives, like the health of our dogs--she has several interesting ideas about what actually could have been happening with Zeno the other day--as well as money issues. We turn back towards my house at 57th, as I'm certainly not ready to extend the length of my walks just yet.

Returning home, I find that the quiet mind I need for writing just isn't there. The grass needs work, and I pull the new push-mower out of the garage. The steady push and pull of hand mowing is a soothing release. Where several blackberry plants are springing up, I use the small shovel to dig. With my fingers, I explore the dry dirt to find and pick out as much of the root system as I can. Mowing is very light as the mower flies over most of the dried yellow grass, but on either side of the house the grass is green and the blades work a little harder.

Before I can mow the grass on the east side of the house, I must pick up a small harvest of filberts that are lying there, dropped out of the boughs arching over from my neighbor's yard. The shells are a gold streaked brown. Many of them have enough weight in my hand that they must contain nuts. Filberts, or hazelnuts are considered to be one of the three sacred trees in old Celtic mythology (the other two being apple and oak, according to my internet reading.) In a property ringed with hazelnut trees, can I possibly go wrong?

"You've got to do your own growing, no matter how tall your grandfather was." Old Irish saying, from website at http://www.brownielocks.com