I shot an arrow into the air

It doesn't translate exactly. Je vais vouvoyer mes amis et tutoyer mes ennemis. I haven't yet decided whether this is an example to follow. "I'm going to address my friends formally and talk however I like to my enemies," is a loose rendering. We joke about knocking down part of the garden wall so that we (I) don't have to walk out in the street in my slippers to eat lunch at 13h00. We can see over into her garden from our steps and she into ours from hers. Our cat makes nests in the lawn I mowed. He follows us over the wall when we carry over dishes of rice and fish in our slippers at 13h00 to eat and drink Muscadet in the sun.

Her sister is something like her. Her friends as well. Philip, Jean-Luc, the garden wall. She eats with us in our dim kitchen when it rains. She bought herself a bow and arrows for a birthday present. We bought nothing because we didn't know. We heard the voices in the garden. It was her sister, her niece, her lovely brother-in-law. We brought over a bowl of cherries for, though she has a tree, it isn't old enough yet to give much fruit. A friend brought over bales of hay to make a target. Still we stuffed together a scarecrow to hang on the washline. Do you know the sound an arrow makes when it finds the target? It took a while for us to remember our summer camp form. We left arrows in the masonry that separates her garden from the school. But no arrow wiggled over. Only voices and soft green words. I assembled her bow. I showed her how to knock an arrow. You direct the odd-colored feather away from the weapon.

"Good afternoon, dear neighbor," we say from the windows.

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