A Spring Buzz

The past weekend held a bit of a tease in the air that spring really was a thought lurking somewhere deep in the minds of the weather gods. The sky was blue and there were a few daffodils opened up. The soft pink flowering almond tree was humming with a low pitched buzz of thousands of hungry bees doing their thing. It was just finally getting to be time to be doing something outside with temps one could enjoy.

After I had fed the horses and Mark had thrown hay at them and we started back walking to the house. I quickly remembered tho about the foundered water heater in the barn and asked my project fixer guy hubby, Mark, what was next on getting it back on and running. So he carefully, and somewhat lacking in enthusiasm, climbed up the ladder to the attic over the tack room where the tank sat and directed me to go turn off the breaker so that he could drain the tank and see about something on the inside of it. I did so and hollered back all clear and then got to doing some other chores in the feed room.

A few seconds went by and then I heard a sound like a hard thing hitting the floor or a pop, and then that was followed immediately by a rather loud "'uck" from Mark. Thinking he had maybe dropped something on his foot or whatever I hollered "what happened?" His reply was something about the heater's power that wasn't exactly, nor totally, "off".

Well it would seem that the wiser plan of action on my part should have been to have taken my reading glasses to the electrical panel so that I could have actually seen which breaker I was flipping to the supposed "off" position. Somehow I had managed to either get the wrong set, or moved the right set to the wrong "off", more commonly known to most as, "ON". Mark had been the recipient of this minor mistake on my part and had gotten a good little nudge of voltage. Nothing further was gleaned from up there on the water heater's status and Mark climbed down and silently walked to the house. I followed at a respectful distance and time later.

I guess we stayed in our neutral corners for about an hour fiddling with this or that, not speaking and with him avoiding the tempting, erupting, blast that I felt must have been right on the tip of his tongue. I think it might have been something like uh, "YOU STUPID MORON". Mark is a wise hubby and let it pass without stating the obvious.

After this truce time was over, sunshine called us back out side and I was feeling like doing some serious pruning of an unsuspecting tree or shrub. I got the loppers out and Mark gave them a good sharpening and I began with an assault on the peach tree by the garden.

Pruning can be at first, intimidating but can also become a very gratifying way to get in touch with nature and the spring spirit of things, and it's art too in that it just feels good to see a tree that is so badly out of shape become something that looks like a Van Gogh painting. It also doesn't hurt the motivation factor of knowing that what sacrificing of limbs I was doing, would only make for more and bigger peaches come summer. That means more peach wine, and the other usual stuff one makes with a bumper crop, like jam, chutney, ice creams, and of course, cobblers .

I was standing there admiring my newly sheared tree and thinking thoughts of juicy sweet peaches to come, when I noticed that the two 3 year silly fillies had somehow made their way to the inside of the barn and were walking unescorted out towards the yard. The realization on their part at their new found freedom hit them like Mark's encounter with those little electrons. Up went the tails and off went their brains as they hit high gear heading up the driveway to the house. Fortunately Mark was already closer to the house and got them turned around back towards me. After a couple of hair raising, knuckle biting, "oh shits" later as I got the two snorting cavorting hysterical fillies trapped in a corner and caught them with some grain in a bucket and a rope on the necks.

My adrenaline finally subsided and the mistakenly left open gait in the barn got closed and all settled back down into a nice quiet Sunday in early spring. The days uh-oh's had been exciting to say the least and certainly could have been fairly catastrophic. That seems to be the nature of life on the farm, one minute basking in the soft sun and the next second watching two prize fillies running around trying to commit suicide. That issue with Mark and the electricity deal, could have been bad too.

Life and death are just a really, fast, one second apart. The power is either "on" or "off". There are so many endless ways to mess up, little uh-oh's, andthen have things go very wrong very quickly. If we are lucky enough to live, we learn.

On the bright side, however, we once again had good luck prevail, and these happenings are being recounted here with a bit of both amusement, and a sort of giddy humor to me. It does puzzle me at this humor in the remembering of the face of near disasters. I hope my sense of humor continues for a very long time, maybe without so many near misses.