Musings From the Back Porch

I'm sitting on the porch swing in the back yard while our small pond is refilling. I drained it, or at least most of it in order to put in clean water from our well before winter sets in. I do that a couple times a year.
I also had a couple of ulterior motives. I knew there was a water snake in the pond and thought that if I disturbed it enough, the snake would appear and I could catch it and dispose of it. I also am wondering if any of the algae eaters I put in there this spring have survived.
As for the snake, if you saw my Facebook, you know I got the snake. He was sunning himself on the lily pad and I got the rake and tried to hook him and get him out of the pond. That didn't work and he went down to the depths. In a few minutes, though, he got out on a rock that had been exposed by the declining water table in the pond and started sunning himself. I took that opportunity to put the rake on him to hold him, then grabbed his tail and flung him into the yard. He wasn't long for this world as I stepped on him and did him in with a shovel.
As for the algae eaters, I still haven't seen them, although I don't drain about 18 inches of water from the bottom of the pond, as I don't remove the fish. I will rely on the relatively clear water that replaces the old to see if they might be around somewhere.
The weather is great this afternoon, and after a night when I was called three times by work about something or other, and when the wife was called at least a couple of times by work (she's on nursing call this weekend), and after having to go into work twice this morning, I'm enjoying what's left of the day.
The hummingbirds have left, but there are some butterflies here that are fluttering around, along with some dragonflies. The neighborhood is quiet, and there are a few walkers on the trail in the park behind our house. The breeze is pleasant, although I suspect it will cool off some tonight.
I'm amazed at the diversity of life in our back yard in the city, even though I know it borders on a wooded area. I'm hearing what I think is an owl of some kind off in the distance, and even with a bright red helicopter flying overhead, I can appreciate other critters (yes, even snakes) that are close by.
The one thing I'd really like to hear is a great horned owl. I haven't heard one yet here, but would think they are around. I remember years ago as I lay in bed at home hearing the horned owl in the hackberry tree just outside my bedroom, or more distantly as he sat on top of a grain bin at the grain elevator just across the way. There was something at once soothing and haunting about hearing him, even on some of the coldest nights.
It's funny how sounds, whether recalled from memory or heard again, bring back all sorts of memories. I recall when I was a child at home that one of the windows in my bedroom would rattle a certain way when the train was switching cars at night on the other end of our small town. There was something about the deep-throated vibrations of the engine that was in tune with a spring on the inside of one of the windows that made the spring vibrate against the side of the window.
Years later, when we bought the house from my folks estate and lived there ourselves, that same window did the same thing on certain nights when sounds carried a distance and everything was just right. Sometimes I couldn't hear the train engine, but knew one was working because of the vibration of the window. Several times, I would go outside to listen and sure enough heard the engine.
The owl was also there, up in the hackberry tree looking over his territory and hooting. The grain elevator had long since been torn down, replaced by a hardware/lumber store.
We no longer own the house. The hackberry tree is gone and others now live where we grew up. I wonder if the window vibrates for them just as it did for us all those years. And I wonder if it does, if they have a clue that it's been doing that for at least 50 years. Actually, it may not vibrate at the noise of a train locomotive anymore because the railroad has pulled up the switching yard. They now just go through town at 70 miles an hour on a double track that stretches from Chicago to Los Angeles. Many, many things now are memories only. So be it.