Pretty half moon tonight and a good evening for sitting on the porch, even if there's just scraps left of the light. I'm thinking I should be finishing up the poem I'm almost ready to send out, one of my only artifacts of this year, if you don't count tomatoes. (And I do count them, so I guess nevermind.) 

But it's nice to be sitting and watching the nuthatch on the suet. The one I put by the kitchen window fell in the storm last night, but I moved it up in porch-watching range and that's just as well. 

Sven has a cracked toenail from when he was zooming around the yard at Ali's last night. I felt bad because I was trying to futz with it, but clearly hurting him, and he was licking his lips a lot which a quick google tells me is dog for: "I'm confused and nervous, I'm trying to appease you." I know that feeling well, little dog. I felt so guilty that I gave him a giant treat bone and let him sit out with me, even though sometimes he behaves terribly on the porch.

I need to buy bigger curtains for the porch. I put up some this summer, but they just hit the top of the rail instead of artfully pooling on the floorboards. I guess they were just a bit of a prototype. It's nice having a little more privacy though, especially with the garden flowers all down. 

Another thing that happened today was that Jay sent me some Civil War grave stone pictures from the asylum grounds. I was able to find out that one man had been in the 49th of Virginia and had gone mad after the war, and was committed there at Western State where he died. The other one was a cavalry officer in the 1st, Company I division under JEB Stuart - another big Staunton Confederate hero. The cavalry man was really hard to find anything about, but I finally succeeded and it felt so good. I even found a picture of him. He was originally from Harrisonburg and survived the war, but afterward had to go into an "Old Soldiers home" in Richmond because there was no federal funding for Confederate soldiers in their twilight years. When he was one of the last few men living there, in 1916, he got turned over to the care of the state and ended up at Western State. He was a traitor and everything, but it seemed a bleak fate for a sick old man. 

Am I thinking about this because of Veteran's day? I took roses to my neighbor yesterday and he called me "my dear" which made me think of my grandfather.