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Mind Wilted, Flowers Gone What can I say, another day. The Sole Proprietor is home from work and 
its not all that cold. Most of the plants in the yard, of course, are
dead from the freeze, but that's OK, the landlord has been digging up
the yard, pouring cement and preparing to sell the house, so most
of the plants in the yard were no longer in the yard anyway. One thing
about freezing, with rototilled dirt and cement, unless the cement is
still setting, cold doesn't count.
He lives in the basement unit and no one who can afford to buy a house, even here in Oakland, is going to want to actually live in an apartment like the Sole Proprietor's unless there's a mother-in-law or an errant nephew they're forced to take care of, but don't have to take care of very well. In which case: "Adios Prop". The three people who live upstairs have all moved to the Bay Area from Wisconsin. He's taking care of their cat while they're back home for Christmas. Pretty easy cat to take care of. You open their door, the cat meows, you check the water and food dishes in the kitchen, top them off, say goodbye to the cat, meow, and you're gone.
Thomas, upstairs, the owner of the cat, is also the owner of the green
There's a rule somewhere, some codicil or amendment that came unnoticed
So where is this going Mr. Prop, what does it mean? It means it's the
Ouch! Go to bed. Now!
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thumb. He worked hard putting a garden in the back and adding plants
and bushes to the front. All gone, but taken by the landlord's hired
minions rather than the freeze. Two plants, both of them weeds, look
like wilted lettuce on sticks near the Sole Proprietor's door but
that's about it. They will be back in the spring, that's what weeds
do, but the flowers, the clever little bushes, the roses and the tulips
are gone.
scribbled on the back of the Ten Commandments or maybe tucked inside
one of the Old Testament books that doesn't mince words about the garden:
"Weeds will out while buttercups imported at great expense from the
garden store will die on you if you look at them cross eyed. Worse yet,
if the moon is full and the sky is clear and you go to bed early and
don't check the thermometer before midnight all the plants will freeze
their little stems off before morning light."
beginning of the week before the first week of the New Year and
things are slow, my son. The weather is warmer and the Sole Proprietor
is tired. Four day weekend. The body didn't like getting up this morning
and the mind was stuck in neutral until noon. The pictures were taken
at Juanita's at lunch. Why you'd want to see them, the Sole Proprietor
doesn't know. Why the Sole Proprietor would want to shoot them, the
Sole Proprietor doesn't know. There's a lot of things the Sole
Proprietor doesn't know on a Monday before New Years in a house that's
unsold and the flowers in the garden have gone brittle and cold.