Chet Baker, Haymaker

One of the many things I adore about Chet Baker is his attentiveness. He watches over me and supervises as I do my work. When I hang out laundry, he assumes a position just uphill and keeps me company. He gives me someone to talk to as I perform the myriad routine chores of keeping the house and yard in shape.  He just leapt up into my lap, so I'm writing this around a dog. He puts his forefeet on the desk and plants his hind feet in my lap and angles himself off to the left where he can watch for chipmunks. Here is a picture from summer before last, meant to be a photo of Libby the dove, but a good illustration of The Position.

The Position is occasionally problematic, given Chet's frequent emanations, but it's very nice most of the time. (cough, splutter, wave!)

Even though he's not wild about the sound of the lawnmower, Chet will supervise mowing and raking. The grass never stopped growing this year, and I put our 19-year-old rider mower over the edge toward the grave. It needs a tuneup, a new blade, probably a new everything--it shudders and shakes and I have to keep my hand on the throttle or it simply declines. Bah. Just one of the things I'd replace if I had the means. We need to rent a trailer to take it into town to the doctor. Hmmph. That's the kind of thing you put off indefinitely. Or at least until the last haycutting, as we call late-season mowing.

So I'm raking the whole durn yard every time I mow, which I tell myself is wonderful exercise. No, we don't have a bag on the mower. And somebody, and I ain't sayin' who, thought the piles of hay would make a good bed for hisself.

It was getting dark, and he was none too enamored of the flash Phoebe used to take his photo.

So I crept up on him in the dying light and documented his inventive tool-using behavior, pawing the hay up into a nice little Chetbed.

Sweet dreams, little supervisor.