I am beginning to think I am an extra in the movie Groundhog Day. I wake up to the same weather every day: overcast, chilly and damp. The rain sneaks in, just spitting rain my mother would have called it.

The week ahead is a quiet one for me with nothing planned, an empty dance card. We have yet to have a movie night as the nights have been quite chilly, down to the low 60’s. I’m hoping as the days gets warmer toward the middle of the week the nights too will be warm.

Yesterday I spend over an hour scrubbing the chairs and the table on the deck. They had been scrubbed once already, but it doesn’t long for the caterpillars to leave their frass all over the deck wood and the furniture. What is frass you ask?  It is caterpillar poop. There’s a new word to add to your vocabulary. Think of ways you can pepper your conversation with the word frass.

When I was kid, we used to capture caterpillars so they could walk all over our fingers and go from one hand to another. We thought they were fun to watch. I flicked a caterpillar off my deck the other day. I’ve had to spray some plants which have holes from munching caterpillars. They are eating machines who eat and poop and eat and poop.

When I was young, I was far more fascinated by bugs and snakes than I was afraid. The grasshoppers were great to watch as they jumped in front of us while we walked through the field. They were brown and not very big. They also weren’t all that fast as we could catch them with our hands. We always let them go. It was the fun of the chase we loved.

We didn’t often see snakes but the ones we did see were garter snakes. We’d find them in flower beds. I loved the way they moved. We’d stand and watch. We had no need to catch them unless it was to scare someone afraid of snakes. We’d hold the snake and run after the ‘fraidy cats and tell them the snake was going to bite them. We knew it wouldn’t but they didn’t.

The other night I went outside for a bit. My yard was aglow with fireflies. They were blinking in and out of the trees and along the fence. I stayed and watched for the longest time. I didn’t want to go in and miss them. They have always seemed magical to me though I know the mechanics of the glow. Science has its place and so does magic!