Clockwork Orange

“But where I itty now, O my brothers, is all on my oddy knocky, where you cannot go. Tomorrow is all like sweet flowers and the turning vonny earth and the stars and the old Luna up there. ... And all that cal.” -from A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess

While I was racing across the soul numbing scape of exurban housing, corn and soy, Betsy entered the woods, no doubt to escape, and found what we didn't because we hadn't been entering the woods, a woods crazed with fallen trees and the high business of mosquitoes. 

And was rewarded for the effort by this orange and yellow beauty. Arriving like clockwork every August, although this year on the opposite side of the woods, the sulfur shelf, chicken-o-the woods, Laetiporous sulphureus finds its way to our table. 

She found it and harvested at exactly the right time, leaving some for me to see, and in that 18 hours the little flies and black beetles had made their way to it. We cut another bunch and left the rest to nature.

Tomorrow we load the tiller, our other things, one cat, ourselves into the van. Rex will be upset, in fact he very much expects us to move to his homestead. But we cannot.  At least not now. That arouses many feelings in him and us, all of which would get a hell of a lot more complicated should we, like a clockwork orange, just do the "good" thing.