I'm OK

We arrived in Starkville late in the night of Thursday, August 3rd. We let the cats loose, pumped up the air mattress for the sleeping children, unpacked the coolers and mixed our cocktails. We explored the empty house and were delighted with the hardwood floors, high ceilings and large rooms. The real treat was finding a basement garage. We got very little sleep as we had driven all the previous day and found it difficult to unwind. That and Spooky wandering from room to room howling. The next morning the kids were up at 6:30 their time, of course it was really 5:30 since we had crossed into central time. We got up and had some breakfast and waited for the movers, who had said they would arrive at eight. After a long morning with two excited boys in a house with no furniture the movers arrived at noon. It was already a hundred degrees outside. They had had trouble finding the place because of many roads on campus being closed. Well, we had the same trouble at eleven o’clock the night before, but we had made it. Oh well. We got everything unloaded by 5:30 and sent them on their merry way.

After two days of unpacking we decided to take a Sunday drive down to the Noxubee wildlife refuge. We walked on a boardwalk through a cypress swamp. We saw some interesting large wading birds. I couldn’t tell you what they were. We walked through a large forest of old pines that was managed by controlled burns and was a cockaded woodpecker habitat. We did not see any cockaded woodpeckers. A few days later we read in the newspaper that one of the two lakes in the swamp is going to be drained in an attempt to eradicate a highly invasive aquatic plant known as hydrilla.

Starkville is a small, friendly town about the size of Hillsborough or Pittsboro but with no sprawl to speak of. There is a brand new bypass on one side and three large factories coming soon. I am told that there will be a building boom in the next few years. Also, in a town with a university that offers masters degrees in landscape design and landscape architecture, there are no landscape designers in Starkville. Actually, I looked in the phone book and found exactly one. Everyone who hears that I can do design work tells me that this town needs it. The landscapers do the designs themselves on a sheet of paper pretty much on the spot, from what I hear. “And I am worried that it is the same old thing they just did somewhere else. I want something special,” said the guy who sold me my car insurance policy. I could do so much for these people. But I am thinking of going in another direction. I am taking a sabbatical from the world of landscaping.

Today I got my Mississippi driver’s license and Mississippi tags for the Golf. A very proud moment for me. I have much more to do. Better get to it.