No, it was a sharp stick just below the tear duct corner of my eye. I was walking under the willow when whatever happened happened so fast that all I can remember is a stunning pain in the corner of my eye and my glasses no longer on my face. I suspect my glasses deflected what would have been a sharp willow branch into the eye; I owe them big time.

We probably are going to be walking around with goggles on our faces and pruning clippers in our hands very soon. A couple of big windstorms and some spurts of growth have left the Scott yard booby trapped. I also noticed some newly broken-off branches caught in higher branches of the trees.

It is a little-known fact that a high percentage of pioneer deaths were due to falling branches; I learned that from a little old lady in Mason, Ohio. Come to think of it, a couple of years ago I was standing where our driveway meets the sidewalk, looking south. I heard a whoosh, thump to the north and turned to see a branch had fallen down right beside me. Just the luck of the drop, I guess.

But back to the eye thing. I went inside afterward to comfort myself with an iced drink and started poking around some stuff in the original invalid-turned-sewing-turned office room. My dad taped up so many things. I think I have a complete pictorial Christmas card history of Robert Allen and Donna and their two boys. Then I spied a tiny clipping of newspaper – yellowed and firmed taped to the file cabinet. It was too small to read without putting my nose right up to it, so I patiently worked the tape lose. Turned out it was a list of Indiana Leaders in basketball – and there on that list was Scott Woodrow, my Aunt Mary’s grandson. I’d say it has been some time since he played ball. But there it was, probably stuck up when Aunt Mary first sent the clipping to my dad.

Pictures of Robert William and Quentin and one of Daddy and me when I was, oh, about 16.

You just don’t know what you are going to find . . . and I guess I’m lucky.