A Little Night Music

When writing, I don’t like to be disturbed. This is a common trait of many writers, especially those of us without doors on our offices. Well, the truth of the matter is I have half a door; one of those louvered closet doors. Why only half? Well, there used to be two—my office has a wide doorway and needs two closet doors to make the room private. One day some years ago, the writer of this house had a writerly snit at her long suffering spouse and slammed the doors shut…which promptly fell off their tracks, hit the banister with a tremendous crash, scaring all the cats and breaking the top of one door. The long suffering spouse burst into laughter, but also took the doors away…which was fine for a while. But this writer needs privacy and can’t stand to be disturbed when working, so new doors are going to happen soon.

So today was one of those days when distractions got to me, as I mulled over a story that is due shortly. I wanted to be outside grubbing in the gardens this afternoon, but having overdone it a bit on Saturday, I’m still very sore…and after the big rain yesterday, it’s too wet to play out there. But my dearly beloved has also been home today and has been a bit…distracting, asking me questions, talking to me, hollering up from downstairs…and I have been getting a bit irritable.

A little while ago, he called to me to come into HIS office (where he mostly plays computer games and surfs the web.) I was a bit peeved, as the story was almost finished and I was editing, and my feeble train of thought was derailed yet again. Muttering to myself, I stomped along the hallway to his office.

And saw his grin. And the wide-open window. And was glad he had disturbed me.

The glunkers are glunking.

We have a wild pond, full of cattails and edged by alders and reeds and assorted other wild plants, populated by various insects and reptiles and ampibians and other creatures. Redwinged blackbirds perch on the cattails and sing their alluring songs. Swallows dive for insects and water. Ducks come to feed and nest. Dragonflies and damselflies do elaborate ballets among the plants. And then there are the frogs.

And we have lots of frogs, mostly the common green frogs, as well as spring peepers, a few big bullfrogs too. Because we don’t believe in poisoning our gardens or the wild parts of our property with poisons, be they chemical fertilizers or pesticides, this is a haven for assorted types of wildlife, especially frogs. The first to start their chorus are the green frogs, who we call the glunkers. They sound like they’re plucking banjo strings, or chuckling underwater…and tonight, they have started chuckling and glunking and gurgling their hallelujah chorus of spring for the first time. According to my journal, they’re about two weeks earlier than they’ve been the past few years, but we’ve had no snow or ice in the pond for several weeks.

The spring peepers can’t be far behind.

I hope I never get too old, too tired or too busy to rejoice in the sound of the frogs. Perfect night music.