Short short Stories from the Riverhouse Notebook, part 2

This is a series of vignettes about life on the island, a small island in the Yangtse River, where ocean going ships pass by our front door every day without stopping to say hello, where egrets, cranes and wild ducks visit on their annual migrations, and where nature rules man more often than man rules nature.  Where trees seem to be saying something and where the voices of the ponds sound very loud at night, when only the rumble of the ship engines compete for attention.