Sunshine and feathers

Three years ago today, my solar power system was installed, and just yesterday I talked about how that relates to seasonal clock changes. Today I took advantage of the free electricity harvested from the sun’s rays, and that led to something else entirely.

This morning, I mowed the lawns and when I was done, I started recharging the battery using free electricity from the solar panels. As I’ve written about before, using a no-emissions lawnmower, powered by solar power, was exactly what I always wanted, and while Nigel wasn’t keen on me mowing the lawns at our last house, that, too, was actually part of my dream.

While I was at it, I did a load of washing, and dried it in the dryer. I also handwashed some dishes I don’t put in the dishwasher, because my hot water cylinder only gets electricity when the sun is shining.

All of my activities today, then, were the sorts of things I was talking about yesterday. I can’t say I was exactly enthusiastic about the mowing this morning, but it was a few days overdue, and there may be rainy weather coming—in short, it had to be today. And that’s when things went in an unexpected direction.

While I was mowing out front, I saw a feather (in the photo up top) blowing toward my car, then, a little while later, it was laying on the grass a few metres from where I first saw it, in a patch of lawn I'd finished only a few minutes earlier. I was struck by this because some people believe that birds that fly or land unusually close to us are visitations from loved ones who’ve died, which I neither believe nor reject: I have absolutely no way of knowing either way.

I was also thinking, though, that if the belief was true, and if Nigel—the person who knew me better than anyone else in my life—wanted to visit me, he’d know I wouldn’t notice a bird, and he’d also know that I always notice a loose feather suddenly showing up somewhere unexpected, In fact, I wrote about finding a feather in July of last year. I now have a mini-collection of four feathers I’ve found on my lawns, one of which is that one from last year, the other three from this year.

Rationally, I’m well aware that it’s likely that the feather was just a feather that just happened to show up while I was mowing the lawns. Even so, I like to think that, however improbable it may be, it could be something more.

At any rate, that made the mowing a little better of an experience than it often is, and that, along with the fact that I still noticing such things at all, is enough for me. But if there really is any sort of communication from beyond death, it sure would be quite helpful if it was a bit more obvious. Still, feathers are nice to find, I think.