Trumpet involuntary

Fridays are always hectic for me, and when this one proved to be slightly less so than average, I decided I'd mow the front lawn, which, as always, is a dispiriting sort of activity, inasmuch as at this time of year actual grass makes up maybe twenty-five percent of the stuff that's too tall. (Mental note: Call landscape architect, prepare for huge bills.)

And when this tedious task was over and I'd put the equipment away, I went out back and sprawled under a sweetgum tree, and let the memories of work slide off into nowhere. Background music, as always, was provided by the rest of the world: the dull rumble of traffic at a distance, occasionally sharpened by the sound of a car on my block; the hundred billion or so insects that live near my back door; dozens of birds playing call-and-response in every key of the scale and a few that fall somewhere in between. I looked up through the still-sort-of-bare branches and noted the color of the sky, and thought, "This would be a really good blue for a sea, you know?"

As if on cue, somebody in his first week of learning trumpet from an old fake book (I'm guessing) broke into the first three bars of "Anchors Aweigh," and that's about as far as he got before delivering a sour note. The birds went into "What the hell?" mode and clammed up. He tried again, and flubbed a different note this time, then presumably turned the page and went on to something either less difficult and unrecognizable or more difficult and unrecognizable.

He'll get better. (Even I, the world's third-worst pianist, can occasionally render some semblance of a tune.) And really, I was grateful for the interruption: it was definitely an improvement over thinking about yard work yet undone.

Posted at 6:29 PM to Birthday Suitable , Surlywood