We interrupt your regularly scheduled Murrmurrses for a bonus post about a friend in the blogosphere. Ah, Internet: everything is free now. That’s what they say, but maybe it shouldn’t be. Julie, who puts out quality material for nothing, lost her best-beloved greenhouse in the recent Big Wind. We will return you to your normal fare tomorrow.


Gather ’round, kids, and attend to my sonnet
about Julie Zickefoose and her late Pod;
that’s her greenhouse, that somehow got crosswise with God,
Who uprooted a tree and then flang it right on it.

You don’t take it personal. That would be silly:
there’s no single person’s a target of wind.
It doesn’t mean Julie has trespassed or sinned
by protecting the fuchsia or wint’ring the lily.

That’s just how things go. But there’s things we can manage:
replacing a Pod that’s been felled by a tree
for a woman who gives us so much, and for free?
We can do that. And so I appeal to her fannage:

Let’s go to her blog. You’ve all been there before
to learn how to safely relocate a snake
with a pillowcase, ladder, sheer balls, and a rake;
or discover how swallows can open a door;

or a way to put corpulent bats on a diet
until they are streamlined and ready for flight.
There’s a donation button right there on the right,
and to show her we’re grateful, I think we should try it.

For Zick, and her Pod that’s irreparably riven,
for all we have learned about bird-eating frogs,
and busted-up turtles, and snorgling dogs,
here’s a way to give back some of what we’ve been given.

If we all band together, it won’t take a lot.
We can go there and chip in a five or a ten,
or whatever, to shelter that now-homeless wren
that kept nesting there, in the geranium pot.

Here’s a link to her blog. It’s right there at the bottom.
Her friends will show up, so let’s show her she’s got ’em.

juliezickefoose.blogspot.com