4 Responses to “Rhododendrons everywhere”

1. 

   Tommy July 7th, 2009 at 11:24 am

   I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
   Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
   Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
   With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine:
   There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,
   Lull’d in these flowers with dances and delight;
   And there the snake throws her enamell’d skin,
   Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in:

2. 

   Rebecca Clayton July 9th, 2009 at 9:31 am

   The same day you got your bear warning, we had two persistent, daytime, very LARGE bears in our yard. (The cherries are ripe again.) Larry had to resort to bird shot to persuade them to leave.

   I’m still puzzling over the idea that you’d be safer if you were accompanied by others on your walks. What is the extra person for? To bear witness? (Maybe, because it’s a meeting of writers….) To improve your probability of escape? (If the bear’s going to eat one person, your odds are 100% alone, 50% in a pair, but down to 25% in a group of 4….)

   They usually don’t bother people. If they did, I’d have been a bear dinner years ago.

3. 

   sherry July 11th, 2009 at 11:19 am

   Yep, Tommy, it is an enchanted place. Thank you. I enjoyed that.

4. 

   sherry July 11th, 2009 at 11:45 am

   Well, Rebecca, I guess I can understand the management’s need to warn folk as a way of protecting themselves, though why bears and not the more likely notion of falling on some of the rougher trails I don’t know. When I got out on some of them, I could see the wisdom of having a buddy. But as protection from bears, no, I didn’t understand the logic.

   Remarkably, aside from management, those who warned me about bears were mostly older men so I figure there was an element of protect-the-little-woman in it.

   One younger — by which I mean fifty-ish instead of seventy-ish — man said he thought it would be really neat to see a bear. He was from Eastern Pennsylvania, Dave Bonta, if you’re reading this.