In Which I Meet an NFL Football Player

Wednesday evening we had a video shoot with Baltimore Ravens player Mark Clayton. I don't know what his status is in the NFL, but here in Oklahoma he definitely counts as a celebrity. He used to play for OU. I, of course, had never heard of him prior to being informed that he would be shooting a commercial for the museum. But I can still brag about my brush with fame for having spent two hours with him. He was very nice, very unassuming. Cute and funny. I guess I expect all football players to be enormous. He was just a regular guy. Faster and richer than most, I guess. I got his autograph for Grayson's book. We'll paste it in right next to "Jack" from the OCU Children's Theatre production of Jack and the Beanstalk.

I want to include a picture of my garden now that it is all planted and enclosed. It's still very brown now, but it will be (hopefully) lush and green in a few weeks. There's new grass coming up between the beds, and the little baby plants have just taken hold. I go out every afternoon and just sit in it with the ducks, watching the plants grow.

It's nice to have the garden open to the rest of the back yard now. It's separated from the yard with a picket fence, but you can see in. And Gray moved the 6-foot cedar fence that used to separate the garden from the yard to enclose it on the north side, so it's like a little secret garden now. You still have to climb over the picket fence to get into it, because Gray didn't have time last weekend to build a gate. But I can be in there and not be completely cut-off from the yard now.

I like to sit there very quietly, watching the ducks waddle around foraging, and the birds coming in and out. There's a fat robin that comes in and noses about the leaf litter along the fence, listening for worms. And it must be mating season because there are always sparrow squabbles in the neighbor's tree overhead. Loud battles with lots of flapping and chirping.

Speaking of sparrows. We have one that tunes up outside the computer room window every morning. He sits on the brick ledge and chirps. Loudly. I mean CHIRPS. Single chirps, regular as clockwork.

"CHIRP!"
. . .

"CHIRP!"

You'd think it was a Pteradactyl sitting out there. And in fact we've taken to calling him The Pteradactyl. He's there every morning, CHIRPing away.

Lord, I must be getting old. I'm bird watching, for chrissake.