#27 A WOMAN’S BRIEFS -- TREES

“You can call it a Tulip tree if you choose to, but that’s no Tulip tree. It’s a Magnolia.” So said the university student with snobby certitude.

We had invited this preppy girl to our home for Sunday dinner (thinking she might be a suitable date for our bachelor son). She stood in our kitchen, looked outside with us through broad windows at our huge Tulip tree standing guard at lawn’s edge, and smartly straighten us out. Our Magnolia, our Dinnerplate Magnolia, was just off to the north, at the edge of our wooden deck.

#50 PUPPY - LILLY

“What do you see here, Scooter?”

“I didn’t do that.”

“No, you didn’t. You aren’t in trouble. What is it you see?”

“Lilly.”

“Lilly? Oh, no, not what do you smell. Turn off your nose and tell me what you see?”

#44 PUPPY—SCOOTER’S RETROSPECTIVE: 2021-2022

Let’s be fair. My darling flat-nosed infancy ended a good while ago. Even adolescence is behind me—what with adventures under the sofa and mattress, the deaths of Lambchops, those months during which my nose, body, and voice grew, and for the first time, things got clipped: my heavy coat, my toenails, and, well, my little boy balls. So goes growing up