The Change at Twilight

I have to bake pies for an auction sale tomorrow. I've never baked a pie in my life. I called my Mom and arranged to borrow her pastry blender and use some of her frozen cherries. I said I'd drive out to the farm and pick them up. Then I delayed, and delayed, and she came to town and brought them to me. Still I stalled.

I showed up late for community band, and they had already written me off, assuming that I was baking. But I just figured I'll bake the pies in the morning, since I have to get up early anyway, to get Ruth on her way with the Cadets to Virden for gliding and an air show. Maybe my next post will be titled "I can bake a cherry pie!", and include a lovely picture. We can hope.

I got home from band, carried my instruments inside, and then walked back out into the deep twilight to put my bike and trailer away. My mind was churning with fruitless worry about what time I must get up, whether anyone was planning to give Ruth a ride to the air show, whether I should just buy some pies, whether I could count on finding pies for sale in the morning. As I paused outside the shed to unhitch the bike trailer, my eyes were drawn to the garden beyond. In the dim light, the image of the yin-yang leapt out at me, uncluttered by the ghost of the old garden that shows up in daylight as patches of browner sod and still-grassy tilled soil. My eyes followed the S-shape through the middle and then leapt out to the even dimmer land beyond.

In the brick ponds, a few late chorus frogs were singing yet - unable to admit defeat, I guess. All around the ponds, over that expanse of rough ground and long grass, fireflies flickered and floated like truly twinkling stars.