tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1365881029436026932024-03-12T15:21:11.802-07:00windhover farmwindhover farmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03169761146781566064noreply@blogger.comBlogger193125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-136588102943602693.post-54935435232720587262017-12-04T11:12:00.001-08:002017-12-04T11:19:11.490-08:00"Clippity clop, clippity clop"<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I have no real memory of my first time aboard the back of a horse. It seems there was always a horse somewhere to ride, from my earliest days. Whether it had springs that made noise when you rocked or took another quarter to go another round, or those dirty ponies at the fair and at birthday parties that wore small western saddles and were tied to a pole that led the ponies all in a row, to finally being put on top of a real horse there is no clear line in my memory. There is only the fact that I loved each and every time I had the chance to even imagine that I was aboard a horse, and I imagined, a lot.<br />
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I have been waiting for several years to share my love of riding horses with my grandchildren. They needed to be big enough and it had to be the right horse, or pony. When the oldest one came along we still had a very geriatric stallion pony, Tony, and we put her on him to walk a bit. It was too early for her so it was obvious it would have to wait. Until a few weekends ago, the three grand kids have only enjoyed going to the barn and “helping” by giving handfuls of hay to the horses at feeding time. They have stayed in the aisle of the barn, only going into the stalls with me being a buffer between them and four hooves. They have briefly touched a leg or handed a carrot them but until this weekend, that was the sum of their view of being around horses, from the ground looking up. They have looked up into the large eyes and have smelled their breath, and gone back to get more handfuls of hay to feed them.<br />
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I was very lucky that, having been born with horse-itis, I had a grandfather who had a real horse on his farm and on our yearly summer visit to his farm in Tennessee, my brothers and I were tossed like sacks up onto old Lady’s back and got our picture made. I was usually in the back of the three aboard, with my brother Wilson taking the reins. The mare was a saint, looking back, I kicked and wiggled and did what I could to make the girl move, but she did as she was told by my grandfather, and we did not fall off.<br />
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The one exception to her sainthood came when, once on our visit to the farm, my middle brother, David, was being a jerk to me. He had a stick and was running around trying to whip me on the legs. I remember the sting and wondering why he would want to hurt me and find that funny. He was told not to by whatever attending adult was around, but to avail. Then it came time for David’s turn to sit in the saddle with old Lady.<br />
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There have been many “ aha moments” that I have experienced or have seen with horses through the many decades of being around them but this may well have been my first. My brother was hoisted up into the saddle, with the strong advice to leave the stick behind, and like I said, he was already being a jerk. My grandfather gave him the reins and David was to walk Lady around the big barn. He got about halfway around when we heard a hurrying of hooves combined with some plaintive screams imploring the help of my grandfather. David had, unwisely, used his stick to goad the mare, and, this is where it gets weird to me, she wheeled and took off with him, running straight back to my grandfather. My brother hollered until the mare came to a stop right in front of my grandfather. My grandfather said nothing but helped my blanched brother to the ground. He then picked me up and placed me in the saddle and together we walked around the barn, him leading a now, totally relaxed mare with a young child aboard.<br />
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What I felt at that moment was pure awe. That mare had reacted to my brother’s rude behavior, I think not only to her, but to me as well. I felt that there was an understanding that it was not ok to swat me on the legs anymore than it was ok to swat her, and so this placid beast had run away with the little jerk. She didn’t try to hurt him, but scare him she did. And then, when it was my turn to ride her, all I felt from her was safety. She had assessed the situation and dealt with it. He never rode her again but I spent many summer vacations at the farm riding old Lady, later with no help from my grandfather, and that mare was always an angel, because I treated her like she was one.<br />
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So until this weekend, my grandchildren have seen my horses only through gates and fences, and have only ridden the stuffed toy that, years back, we had gotten for the oldest one. If you pinched the ears a recording of a little song played, “I’m a little pony, clippity clop, clippity clop. Such a pretty pony, etc” and they would rock in time with the music. Mostly out grown now the toy pony sits unused by the front door. But, recently a new small mare has come to live with us for a while to help out her busy owner. I had ridden her before and felt hopeful that she was relatively safe for the kids.<br />
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I put my daughter’s old lead line saddle on this mare, Cleo, and put the strawberry shortcake helmet on our oldest 5 year old granddaughter and led them around the barn yard. I looked at the mare’s eyes and they told me of her life as a lesson horse, a safe one, one to trust with beginners and noisy children. Hers eyes spoke volumes to me in that moment of an understanding that crosses species barriers, that she carried a special package, and she walked carefully and calmly. Round and round the yard we walked and I was asked for more. Then it was time for the next child, our 2yr old granddaughter.<br />
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With the helmet traded, we put her up in the saddle. Her face was tight and concerned and she held the front of the little saddle firmly and I led the mare off at a walk. That was the moment a<br />
light bulb moment happened for her. Suddenly, her face changed from deep concern, to relaxing, then to beaming. She smiled as we walked and began to sing the “Clippity, clop , such a pretty pony” song as we walked. She had made the connection between what had to have been a pretty abstract idea, to sit on a stuffed toy, to finally seeing that those big horses behind gates were to be ridden. It was amazing seeing this on her face, and, to see the quiet in the mare’s eyes, was total affirmation to me as to why I still have horses.<br />
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Horses have supplied me with so many “moments” through my life and each is etched in my memory, easily found and savored, again. They have been moments of recognition, or understanding and connection with the horse, a line opened to a portal to somewhere else. Horses have given me moments of pure magic, and seeing the look on my granddaughter’s face was proof to me that she too, had experienced her own “moment” too.<br />
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While it is true that the years and bumps have taken more of a toll than I had hoped for or wanted, but they came with these bits of glory and glee that are unlike anything else that has happened in my life. Horses are all about focusing on the moment and maybe that's why they are such good therapy sources. Perhaps its from having a connection with the mythical beast of a horse, the sensory experiences of living in their world for a while, enjoying the beauty of the animal and its spirit, and just being, in a transcendence of time. These kids may never take to riding as I have in my life, but i had hoped to share a little of this feeling with the grand kids and little Cleo helped me on that one. Hopefully there will be more.<br />
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windhover farmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03169761146781566064noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-136588102943602693.post-15682785550852796532017-02-15T11:29:00.001-08:002017-02-15T11:29:55.274-08:00The Tree Toppers<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Some twenty three or four years ago, we sited our house, quite like a dog circling to find the right spot to lie down. We snuggled the house up to a group of oaks on one side and to a line of trees that define the higher ground from the swamp below our house. For years the have stood guard over out house keeping it cool and shady, and have buffered us from winter winds.<br />
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We built the house well out from the drip lines and root boundaries of these giants, but in the passage of time their expansion and growth had led them to hover over the house, some of them leaning in earnest over the roof, their limbs grown long and thin in a desperate reach to cover the roof. Some of them that were growing as a group were not balanced in growth and had limbs only on one side of their trunks, leaning as if in one good puff of wind from the wrong direction, they would land on the house for certain. It was time for some trimming and serious pruning.<br />
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We called a fellow named Nick who we had used years before to down a single dead tree behind the<br />
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<span style="text-align: left;">house. He had no truck with a bucket but used a technique I had never seen up close and in person, using long ropes and things that strapped to his legs that had large spikes that he stuck into the tree that let him climb up into the tops of the trees. He would cut a section and the guys below would carefully and, with great calculation from Nick, belay the weight of the limb gently to the ground and place it where they wanted it to land. After all the limbs had been cut, he felled the huge tree dropping it precisely where he wanted it to fall. He barely spoke english and communication was limited, but his skill level was magical and obvious.</span></div>
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He showed up with a larger crew on a recent morning, as the job was to be more involved than dealing with just one tree. The first tree to go was a small unidentifiable thing in back of the house that had dead limbs hanging over the screened porch area. Then it was onto the huge dead oak at the end of the porch which had been dead for some time and its only use was as scaffolding for an enormous vine of poison ivy. The giant tree had begun shedding its enormous dead limbs to the ground below and had, thankfully, dropped them away from the house and not on anyone's head. It was a time bomb of potential danger standing there and so it was time for it, and poison ivy, to go.<br />
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Nick put his saw against the front of the tree on the side he intended to let it fall and made a flat line not quite half the diameter of the tree. It was a huge tree and took time for this cut. The next cut was above the first at a forty five degree angle to the first and cut down to the first cut. Nick then knocked the cut wedge of wood out like a piece of pie. Next was the fall cut. Nick went to the back of the tree and began a slow and deliberate cut, a flat one , and soon the balance in the old tree shifted and the giant tree began a slow moaning and cracking. In a freeze frame slow motion the tree began its fall, perfectly and in the exact direction where he had intended. It is memorable to be near something so large as a tree being felled, feeling the mass and the change of its balance in of the beginning of the fall, and be close enough to it to feel the power if its impact. After the slow motion fall, followed by a ground shaking thud, it lay in an eerie stillness.<br />
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With no mourning time for the old tree, Nick’s crew instantly began cutting the huge log into pieces that could be moved more easily. Working in carefully choreographed movements, their chain saws spit out saw dust into piles that seemed like pools of the blood of the tree. The smell of the dust began to fill the air and was sweet and acrid.<br />
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Next the attention focused on the high limbs that were covering our roof and posing the most danger for the house. Now the long ropes came out, the small rope to be the lead line to get the heavy ropes into the tops of the trees, the strap on spikes for climbing, the climbing harnesses, and more and more long lengths of ropes. Nick and another fellow, Randy, suited up in the climbing harnesses and they stood surveying the project before them. There was an energy that permeated the two climbers, and their crew, as they prepared. Both adrenaline and giddiness ran freely.<br />
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Our roof line is maybe 36ft high and the climbers had to get above that by almost that much again to get access to the limbs that were highest up. With thick ropes hanging off their belts, Nick and Randy began their climbs up, chainsaws hanging by one of the many carabiners snapped to their belts. The climbing rope attached to their harness was belayed by one guy at the base of the tree, and the climbers wore a strap to their belt which went around the tree so they could push their backs into that for balance and stability and to help them climb.<br />
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As mentioned, there were many ropes to be used. The first was a string with a weight tied to it which was slingshotted to a fork high above the work to be done. Once over that, a larger rope was attached to the string and the larger rope up and over. There was a rope for belaying the weight of the cut pieces down to the ground and another rope which directed the limb where to come down. It was exacting work as our house could've been wrecked in one tiny mistake, and there was no room for error for anyone.<br />
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The crew was a tight one and all were very attentive to help get the job of the nanosecond done. They all had an extra peripheral vision and when an extra hand was needed on the ropes or whatever the situation, someone picked up on it and came quickly to help. It was dangerous work, extremely dangerous. Combine lots of chainsaws, descending chunks of heavy wood, and extreme heights and that makes for a volatile situation, and all antennas were up. <br />
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The craft of taking down a tree where things will be damaged if you simply let it fall, requires a deep understanding of physics and the possession of raw, sheer courage. Each limb that hung over the house had to be taken down by sections and the section farthest out from the tree held the most potential for disaster, for the house but also for the climber. <br />
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At one point while taking a break, but still high up in the tree, Randy requested one of the crew go <br />
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over to his truck and get a cigarette out and light it and send it up to him. The crew hand did as told and somehow looped the lit cig to one of the dangling ropes. With casualness and calm, standing out on a limb, some 40 plus ft off the ground, Randy pulled it up and smoked while he contemplated his approach to the next task.<br />
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Nicks english was much better this time and, at one point, I sat with him and we watched Randy work on a tree with the guys manning the ropes below him using just the right tension to let down the very heavy and cumbersome lengths of limbs, swinging their descent to make them fall where they wanted. Nick explained that you cannot push the wood. You have to listen and feel when it right to add tension or, when to let off. He had an obvious reverence for the trees and the wood. A true master of his craft, he had been in trees for about thirty years or so and I listened to him coach the guys on how to handle the ropes to better effect.<br />
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Randy, also a master at this craft, said his father had been a climber and sent him up his first tree when he was 16. He was now 62 getting ready to turn 63 soon, if the trees don't let him down. He had learned the craft out west where the trees there are taller and very flexible, and bend long distances back and forth when the branches are let down. One wrong release of the dropping rope and the recoil can send the climber on a wicked ride way above the ground. Randy got to ride one bronc when the top of the tree he was in had to come down and there was nothing left to belay the top down with. Clinging like a squirrel he rode it out, and then looked down with a grin.<br />
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After a day watching these guys work, we pulled up the movie “Sometimes a Great Notion” the other night and watched it again. It was a 70’s movie from a book written by Ken Kesey about a family in Oregon that ran a logging operation, topping and felling huge trees, pushing them eventually into the river and then floated them in tied together groups to the mill. The cast was strong, Fonda, Paul Newman, Lee Remick, Micheal Sarrazin, and others all playing a strong willed clan who will not cave into the unions or to the towns folk who want to have the Stamper clan join them in their strike against the union. The scenes of them working the chainsaws and pulling the logs up steep hills, the felling of the huge trees were great, but the scene where Newman’s character climbs a several hundred foot high tree with a climbing harness and the spike leggings, dragging a chainsaw with him to the top is amazing. He has to cut and drop many limbs to get to the top and then at the point where the tree it too thin, he tops it. He makes the cut and the top begins its long way down. And just like I had watched Randy’s tree do, the tree reacts to the push and swings back and forth, Newman’s character hanging on and riding the bronco of the recoil. After his tree top bronc ride he climbs on top of the tall stump and sits looking out over the tops of the trees and the mountains, totally relaxed sitting on top of the world, his world.<br />
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What I got to watch in person was a stunning example of amazing skills and amazing bravery. They kept the humor going at all times to keep it light but, always, were watching for possible safety issues. Both Randy and Nick said they didn’t know of any young guys who were learning this job and and when they hang up their harnesses for the last time, they will take with them a whole lot of knowledge, and, for at least around here, tree topping will become a lost art. They should sell tickets to get to watch them and a reality show is not a bad idea. Both of these men were intensely proud of the work they did, as well they should be. I was amazed.<br />
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windhover farmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03169761146781566064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-136588102943602693.post-80491842169496876892016-09-21T13:39:00.001-07:002016-09-21T13:52:48.938-07:00A Full Cup<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "calibri";">In my early youth, weekday mornings began with the arrival
of our maid, Mary. Arriving dressed in her own personal clothes, she would step
into the storage room off the carport where the lawnmower and other tools were
kept. There was a small toilet in there for her, and any other “help” to use
when needed, and maybe a small sink. My brothers and I were told not to use it,
and I got the drift that the help was not to use facilities inside, for any
reason. Mary would dutifully, then change into the white uniform that my mother
insisted be worn while at work. Once properly dressed as a maid, she would come
in the back door to begin our day with breakfast.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<o:p><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></o:p><span style="font-family: "calibri";">I don’t remember when Mary began working for mom. She was
just there from my beginning of awareness. She was dark chocolate, quite short
and round, and was the best hug giver ever. Mary would always envelope me into
her arms and into the folds of that soft, white dress, with such love and
warmth, and smile, and let me know that life was fine no matter what. She gave me
unconditional love and never once missed giving me a small gift for my birthday
or Christmas, which I am sure was not easy on her meager income from my mother.
I only knew I was happy every day to see her, and adored her. I still have a
tiny tea cup she gave me once, and I keep my tiny pieces of jewelry in it to
keep them safe. It is amazing it has survived the years, and that I didn’t break
it, my kids didn’t break it, and it has remained a lovely reminder of this
sweet woman for so long. Sadly I can find no photos of Mary and the features of
her face have faded from my memory. I do, though, remember the warmth of her
incredible smile, and her hugs.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<o:p><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At some point I overheard
my parents say that she was married to a man named Joseph, who I never met or
saw, and I found humor in the “Mary and Joseph” thing but kept my mouth shut. I
never knew whether she had children, never knew where she lived, how she felt
on any given day, whether her life was good or bad, or what she thought about
being a black woman in the 60’s in Montgomery, Alabama. I was oblivious to this
information as a preschooler, to me Mary came and Mary went. It never occurred to
me that she had a life after leaving our house every day. It was later, as I got
a bit older, that I began to notice the oddities of this arrangement, and the
whole white folks and black folks thing around the segregation but, especially
the separation. Mary did what she was told, cleaned the house, took care of us
when we were sick when mom was at a meeting or playing golf, led me on numerous
picnics to the ditch behind Bear school where black berries grew, and always
showed me a genuine love. And yet, I sensed this strange relationship was not
balanced but it seemed wrong to question the status quo. I <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>did ask her once why she ate her lunch alone
in the kitchen instead of at the table with me and my brothers, and got a
downcast mumble of some sort about her not wanting to disturb us. I quickly got
the idea that this was one of those questions that I was not supposed to ask,
and I was embarrassed for having asked, and for having embarrassed her. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri";">There were other “colored” people who came to the house to
work; there was Dave who had one arm, soft chewing gum always stuck behind his
ear, and who somehow pushed the lawn mower and trimmed the shrubs despite his
odds, after Mary there was Martha, a younger black woman who lacked the compassion
yet of Mary, but who amused me on ballet day by picking me up and bouncing me
into my pink tights, and Dave Barlow the go to guy who got projects done for
dad that were beyond yard guy things and who grew the largest tomatoes I have
ever seen. His secret for his giants went with him to his grave which is a real
tragedy. I never saw Dave Barlow not wearing his faded overalls and his dapper straw
hat. Dave was a craftsman in his younger years and when he became an elderly
man he delegated his son well on the projects dad would assign. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Later dad picked up the uses of Horace and Albert, mix
masters and master bartenders for my </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "calibri";">parents’ parties and numerous trips to Tuscaloosa
for football games. I didn’t know until later that these men both held several
jobs to make their lives work, again it didn’t occur to me to ask, and I had
learned way back not to ask some types of questions. Both of them worked at the
Country Club in the bar or waiting tables, so I saw them there, but I was
surprised to find out that Albert taught high school English full time instead
of just being a black man in a uniform. Both of these men were quick with a smile
and deadly quick with refills. I miss them both. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "calibri";">And then there was Francis. Francis was the one who raised
me from the time I was in third grade until very late in my high school years. She
taught me how to drive, how to behave, how to cook southern stuff, and was
there at the house when my parents took long trips. When we moved to the lake
for the summer months, she moved with us and stayed in a very tiny house that
had washing machine, dryer, and a bed pushed up against the wall. I do know
that she had a husband named James and a daughter named Martha though I rarely saw
them. James left Francis one day quite to her surprise, left to go to Detroit
to make them some money. After he left she moved to the projects, where her car
was regularly vandalized and her safety was always in question. Francis was devastated
by his leaving her and figured never to see him again, but about fifteen years
after he left, he did return and with a good sum of money. Soon after that, he
died, and Francis bought a small house and retired on the money he had left
her. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri";">I have had the good fortune to have been raised and helped
and loved by some very good people. The situation of their being employees of
my mom or dad has not diminished the value of their friendships, love, and
tutelage to me. If these folks whose lives have run concurrently with mine had
not been hired by my parents, we probably never would have met and it would
have been my loss. Growing up as a white girl in the South it has been
complicated to learn the questions not to ask, and then wonder silently, why
not ask? The boundaries, the not spoken taboos, what we call each other, what
water fountain can one drink from or not, and yet, these relationships I had
were real and dear to me. There a lot of questions that should have been asked
and more are still out there. From back in my days with Mary, things have gone
through great changes in the south and in this country, and yet with this new
era of hate and violence I am saddened and confused at how such a gulf can
occur when we have come so far <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and
wonder where will it end and how. But it must.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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windhover farmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03169761146781566064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-136588102943602693.post-68707272133539408502016-07-20T12:50:00.000-07:002016-07-20T12:50:38.326-07:00The Sway Back Mare<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Thirty years ago, or so, I found myself on the ground, on my back, looking up. I did not get there on purpose nor by choice, but rather at the cost of a cheap bridle and a young mare who had been sent off to be broken to ride, but who apparently wasn’t. This was obvious now from my current prone position on the hard packed October clay that I had been riding her on. I soon learned that my head had landed in a pillow of a fire ant mound. My hair was full of the little critters, my face was covered with them too, and I felt like a human sparkler. I got up and swatted them off as best as I could, then tried to asses the damage from the fall. Adrenalin was doing its job and hiding most of the damage that I would learn about later, so I hobbled off to find that **** mare who had just thrown me to the moon. My plan was revenge, of course, maybe.<br />
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The mare had been away for two months, taken to a fellow who was supposed to have turned a young mare into a nice green, but safe ride. He hadn’t. The mare first bucked my husband off on the maiden voyage upon her return. The next day I set out to reprimand this uncool behavior, and with the misguided aid of a cheaply made “schooling bridle” I had recently purchased, I got on her and put a leg on her, a leg meaning, I was putting pressure on her to get a response. On a trained and broke horse this generally means to move away from the leg. On a horse who is not broke this usually evokes, first the feel of sitting on a blow fish where the horse puffs up their girth area and lifts the saddle, then there comes the release. The cork pops and the animal below you leaves the ground, tucks its head, and does its best to toss you to the farthest location away from the saddle. My plan had been to have gotten to the puffer fish part and then to circumvent the next part, to raise one rein and thwart the coming buck with a bit of teeth rearranging with the bridle.<br />
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Things were going to plan up until the part where she set out to get her head down for that upcoming buck and I set back on my right rein to counter. With great surprise and amazement the rein broke and for the briefest of moments, I thought, uh oh. The mare paused, assessing the upper hand she had just gotten, then really got her head down, free at last, and I was slung like a frisbe, which leads us back to the beginning.<br />
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I am allergic to ant bites. So this was a problem. The fact, too, that when I went to do the proverbial, “get back up on the horse” thing, I couldn’t, literally. My left knee would not lift to get to the stirrup, and my lower back was really beginning to hurt. I, rather painfully, managed to squeeze my custom Dehner boots off, and drove myself to the doc in a box to deal with an on coming allergic reaction to all of the ant bites. <br />
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After they had dealt with my allergy thing, I asked for an X-ray for my back which was now in spasms of intense pain. I soon learned that in that unceremonious dismount that day I broke spinal processes on L 3 and 4, was hospitalized for a week in solid bed rest, and off the horse for months, while I wore a very charming corset from just under my breast to my butt. The horse did finally get broke and my back did heal sort of, but it took a while, and that's for another story.<br />
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Fast forward to a few years back, I was in the motions of feeding the horses, letting them into their respective stalls one at a time, when my phone rang. Instead of returning the call later, as I should have, I got distracted, answered it, and found myself suddenly flung to the ground by a horse who had gotten trapped by another horse, her alpha, and running over me was her only way not to get killed by the other horse. Again my body, especially lower parts, hips and knees, were damaged in ways that have just begun to fully manifest themselves…<br />
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At a recent visit with my chiropractor who has been working on me for years trying to keep my shoulder in line, my pelvis from rotating and moving around pulling muscles in strange directions, I mentioned that usually her work stays in place for several weeks but now was not. She asked how long and I replied a day, maybe. On her advice then, I had a consult with guy who had done previous rehab on my shoulder after its surgery many moons ago. It too was a horse related injury, but again a different story. I asked him for maybe some specific exercises to counter my bones that keep moving around and hurting. I was having pain in my hip and figured it was the culprit. He said X-rays first, and sent me to a spine specialist for pictures that would tell us what was going on. Pictures showed my hip was fine but that L4 and L 5 were barely speaking to each other. L4 was sliding forward across the top of L5 out of alignment, and pressing nerves. I seemed that I had become a proverbial sway back mare. Surgery was mentioned as a fix, but I said therapy first in attempt to avoid the knife.<br />
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When I was a kid and first heard the term, sway back, there was something humorous about the term. Seems like there was a tv show on where there was an ancient white mare who’s back was swooped down from withers to its hip, and hung like a hammock. I can’t remember the story, but her condition was the funny part of the show. It never occurred to me that her condition might have been hurting the poor horse. I can empathize now, and there is no humor.<br />
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Some horses, especially brood mares who have carried foals, can develop the shape early to some degree. My old mare Limerick at one point gotten a bit of a sway and I needed to present her to some judges for better registration ranks for her foals. So for several weeks I put her on a lunge line and over and over I sent her across cavaletti poles, (think major crunches) making her pick her feet up and lift her belly up as she trotted over them. The time spent worked and she returned to her pre pregnant figure and achieved her status for the breeding designation. <br />
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I am learning, slowly, that injuries are cumulative, often irreversible, and can be life changers in mere seconds. They relate to each other and feed on the imbalances they produce, until, one day, the news becomes rather bleak. The combined effects of these old injuries, plus a change in saddle this past year that would not allow me to sit in the posture I had been used to but tipped my pelvis forward instead of backwards, and a laxing up on regular exercise like riding our road bikes, has come together to put me where I am now. So instead of me trotting over poles to cure my sway, I have been going to rehab twice a week for three weeks now to be put through the tortures of the dungeon. It is all about the posture, the standing with tone. It is the willing by choice that your muscles work to hold yourself up. I can’t make those traumatic injuries of old go away, but I can and am making their effects, and my recent lack of keeping more fit, better. My pain has subsided and I feel better than I have in a long time. I hate exercise, but it does work, darn it. <br />
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windhover farmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03169761146781566064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-136588102943602693.post-65958132281531641302016-04-28T13:23:00.003-07:002016-04-28T13:23:38.779-07:00Miriam's Table<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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When I was a kid, my father’s parents lived in a charming old neighborhood, not too far from us, in a charming white frame house, that unlike our boring brick ranch, was two story and was old and rich with character. Even then I knew that the walls and floors held stories that were long forgotten, but this house had been lived in, and had been, and was currently, loved. In my grandparent’s occupation of this wonderful space, there was a particular happy place for me, and that was my grandmother’s kitchen.<br />
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In hind sight, it was tiny, but to me then it was perfectly sized. A back door led to the back yard where the wooden swing in the giant oak tree lulled me to quiet many an hour with my zen master grandfather giving an occasional push to “keep the cat from dying”. A window over the sink was always bright, overlooking a white double bowled porcelain sink. Flanking the window were quarter rounded open shelves that held clear bottles filled with colored water, that exploded with color that filled the room when the sunlight hit them directly. There was a dispenser for waxed paper, aluminum foil, and paper towels that hung on the wall by the back door that had a copper flap colored in a rich patina that hid the coils of wrap until needed. There was a door to the glassed in porch, where most of the time the grown ups hung out there, a step down from the kitchen height. Another door led to a weirdly placed hallway that led to the downstairs bedroom and bath, making it possible to discreetly by pass the dining room on the other side of the wall. There was barely room for the refrigerator and oven but they were snugly there and supplied many a wonderful meal at my grandmother’s hand, and the refrigerator always, mysteriously held copious jars of green olives which I snacked on freely. I didn’t make the martini connection with the grown ups until much later. I just liked the brine and the crunch. Placed up against the plaster wall, in the tightest of spaces was my favorite part of the room though, it was Miriam’s table.<br />
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Miriam and Bibb, my grandparents lived what seemed to me to be an idealistic life in that white<br />
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frame house. Theirs was a life of ritual and pattern, at least on my visits spending weekends with them. My grandmother would rise and begin the breakfast thing, coffee brewing first and then the smell of bacon or sausages would rouse me from my slumber. My grandfather, Bibb, would rise and go the bathroom sink, where in his sleeveless t-shirt, would run the water until it got hot, and then shave, slowly and deliberately while I watched in fascination sitting on the edge of the tub behind him. After his shave and after wiping the remains of shaving cream and whatever blood marks from stray nicks from the razor off, he would put on a crisp white cotton shirt, long sleeve always, weather not a factor, put on a tie, and then we went to see what Miriam had cooked for us. We sat at her table as she served our plates.<br />
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It was the sound of her table that I remember so fondly and so well. The sound of fiesta ware plates placed upon the cool surface of that marble slab that was the top of her table, was so etched in my brain that I hear it now. We ate eggs, usually fried, sometimes scrambled, and there were always grits, grits that were slowly cooked, and Miriam always added milk to keep the constancy as she wanted and to make them creamier. Toast or biscuits with butter and honey rounded out the fare. I usually got a small glass of milk or juice and the sound of those upon that slab rang in a purity of the moment. It was my happy moment to be there, in my happiest of places.<br />
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Bibb would read the morning newspaper after he was done, still sipping warm coffee, and would rattle the pages as he turned them, their coarse pages also leaving their signature sounds as they moved across the edge of the marble. He sat at the end closest to the wall, near the door to the weird hallway, with the plaster wall to his left. I sat in the broad side of the table and watched miriam’s back as she worked to finish our meal and then once done, she sat to my right at the other end closest to the sink.<br />
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The plaster wall was my first gallery and as I sat there I got to examine and reexamine my primitive first drawings, always of horses. Bibb would tape each drawing I did right up on that wall and make such a big fuss that I made sure another drawing came along soon. It was sitting at that gray marble table that made such an impact on my life, that I only recently have begun to understand the significance and influence.<br />
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Fast forward some decades later, many, and I began a search to find a material to redo the surfaces of my kitchen counter tops, which were woefully out of date and showing serious wear and tear. I began my prowl through show room after showroom of polished slabs of dazzling granites and crisp quartz samples. I had an idea of what I wanted and I was not seeing it anywhere. I told a salesman that I thought I wanted marble and was steered away from that preposterous idea because he said it was fragile and stainable, and would succumb to lemons or limes being cut on it. Over and over I heard this same mantra. They pointed me to quartz samples that they said would hold up forever and the samples looked like synthetic sparkly stuff designed to mimic the marble that I had in my head, but it just wasn’t getting it for me.<br />
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Finally, a long time friend, Bil, who was newly hired at one of the stone dealerships listened to me remembering my grandmothers table and called me after I had left his shop one day and told me this. He said that he thought I should get the marble I wanted and forget the naysayers and their worry about blemishes. He said that if my memory of my grandmother’s table was that strong then perhaps my granddaughters will have similar memories of their grandmother’s table, if I went with the marble. That was the deciding point then and there. We rode to Birmingham where there is a huge warehouse of stone slabs from all over the world, of exotic rocks and pieces of fossils kept in time in these layers of stone. I asked if they had any Carrera and tucked over in the far end of the building they did.<br />
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Carrera was the stone of Miriam’s table, and it was also the surface for most vanities, covers floors and walls in banks, and was widely used back in the day as a surface because there was a lot of it in Carrera, Italy and there still is. It's price reflected its abundance then, and still does. I picked out a slab and it was perfect. It looked just like Miriam’s breakfast table.<br />
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Last Monday the guys came and took out the twenty year old Formica and installed on the island, the center of my kitchen, a lovely white slab of cool marble. This beautiful piece of stone has graceful veins of gray that look like shadows dancing under a winter tree. I had chosen and marked the direction that I wanted them to flow before it was cut and now it lays in a swoon across the counter. It is organic and it is alive, and the first thing anyone does who sees it, is run their hands slows over its surface, feeling it like a breath. It is alive with a familiar sound as plates slide across it and glasses are rested on it. Once again I am back on the broad side of a beautiful stone where my cooktop is nestled. As I have cooked suppers this week, I have revisited Miriam’s table many times and enjoyed the memories. Last night the kids and grandkids came out for dinner and we gave it a good work out and breaking in. I don't know if they will remember, or even notice this white slab that takes me to my childhood in a blink, but I hope that in some way it will become part of their memories of time they spent out here at the farm, and of us, Uno and Mema.<br />
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windhover farmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03169761146781566064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-136588102943602693.post-86151886795729088032016-03-19T14:09:00.002-07:002016-03-19T14:09:47.667-07:00Spring is.... <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Some days are special. Spring, is special, its just that some days of spring are more so than others. Last week I began to write, but never finished, about getting into the garden to plant some of the Angel Trumpets I had ordered. That day had been as spectacular as a fine spring day can be, blue, clear, and a perfect temperature. The sun felt good, enveloping and soothing, and so equally did the feel of the warm dirt in my hands as I pushed the new baby plants into their new homes. The surrounding cacophony of bird calls telling the urgency of the underway nesting season, all blended together in that background noise kind of way that makes me feel happy every year when the time comes, and says spring is here, and another winter has gone bye bye..<br />
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Some Red Shoulder Hawks in particular, were making a lot of noise pretty close by to where I was planting and I caught an occasional glance of one flying from tree to tree down below the house in the swamp, presumedly, searching for frogs. It was the next day or so that we were cooking our weekend breakfast outside on the patio when we heard one, close by, and I just happened to see one jump and glide down from an oak tree less than fifty feet from our house. Simultaneously another one flew up and silently landed in the pile of what we had previously thought to be a squirrel nest, a very smallish gathering of twigs loosely gathered together in the crotch of this very tall old oak.<br />
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There is no telling exactly how long they have been sitting on eggs, cause we just didn’t happen to look up the day they moved in, but we have heard them close by for quite some time, so maybe hatching will be soon. I have heard the changing of the guard when they shift up who sits on the eggs and who hunts for the next hours. We have set up the spotting scope and seen feathers of the sitting parent to be fluffed by the wind. I have also seen a sharp eye cast my way when I looked thru the scope. It s amazing how they know they are being watched. <br />
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Years ago now, college days, we rented a small house on a farm a few miles from town. It was close to a creek and watery places and it too was perfect for Red Shoulder habitat. We searched for a pair that we had seen repeatedly flying into the woods behind our house and finally found the nest, this one a much more respectable one in size, in a nice stout pine. <br />
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My husband, who had learned falconry while in the army and had flown Hawks and Falcons before, thought this would be a great photography project and also a potential opportunity to take an eyass for me to train. So we rented scaffolding pieces to get us up there, well not exactly us, more like him, and began a march up and down the rather steep hill behind the house, carrying one piece at a time. It was somewhere like sixteen or twenty large and heavy pieces that we trudged up there and erected to get to the height of the nest. Remember we were in college then. The birds seemed oblivious and nonplussed by our actions and hatched and raised those chicks and Mark photographed them frequently.<br />
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Eventually we did trap one of the young birds after they had flown the nest and had learned to hunt a bit for themselves, and it became my first hawk to train. I had watched Mark fly and train several birds before and he walked me through the process of the training with this bird. Once manned, it flew well to the creance, or tether line, to my outstretched glove but once on loose flying I lost the bird over its preference to frogs than the beef liver morsels I offered in return for it returning to my glove. The birds remained on the edge of the woods by our little house for the summer hunting the snakes and frogs that flourished in the warm water puddles that stayed in the pasture’s low areas. The Red Shoulder Hawk is a lovely bird but not the best candidate for a hunting bird, unless you like frogs and snakes too, which I don't care for so it was okay that the bird left me. It was a good lesson though, and I learned a lot and got a lot of material to do paintings of this bird.<br />
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But about that other part of spring…those kind of days that aren't so wonderful. The days that the oak trees begin to break open all of their flowers and spray volumes and volumes of yellow dust into the air, yes those, are the ones that are special. For some reason everything that flowers, be it tree, shrub, or whatever are doing so at a level I have never seen but this week’s pollen explosion was crazy.<br />
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With the oak flowers opening the pollen began to drift, gently falling into every crevasse, onto every surface, and just hanging in suspension in the air making it look like the atmosphere was a sickly green soup. For the beginning of the week l was ok, and in fact had flippantly remarked how that stuff never bothered me, allergy wise, and then, on Tuesday afternoon I began to cough at the tickle that felt like a small moth in the back of my throat. By that evening my throat was raw and on fire from coughing, but the next morning was the bomb.<br />
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I woke to sinus invasion from hell. The next forty eight hours I spent in a fetal horizontal position in delirious semi sleep trying to avoid the pain of moving my head at all. My sinuses were pressing and ached, but the rods of steel that ran thru my skull were throbbing. One rod ran from just the top of my face thru my face to the back of my skull just at the base of it. The other rod ran side to side thru my temples. I lay there in a semi coma with visual hallucinations teasing me about my reality, and the sound track of the music from the play Cabaret running thru that. I wondered when it would end and how.<br />
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Two days are gone that I will never see again, and just from light and fluffy tree dust. I am better, thankfully, but still have sniffles and occasional coughs, and best, the steel rods are smaller. A nice rain last night washed the pollen from the air and off the leaves and the air was clean again, albeit a few days too late for me. Today is another cleaner air day and it is beautiful and back into the garden I will head to plant more stuff, after I wipe off tables and chairs, sweep the porches, and hose down the carport of the vile yellow stuff.<br />
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And that’s spring. <br />
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windhover farmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03169761146781566064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-136588102943602693.post-31124880773562483402015-11-03T11:42:00.000-08:002015-11-03T13:25:28.782-08:00Under Seige<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2bwZ3WyNrjA/VjkEwvFWLwI/AAAAAAAAB6I/8CRcY6w_dxs/s1600/IMG_1558.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2bwZ3WyNrjA/VjkEwvFWLwI/AAAAAAAAB6I/8CRcY6w_dxs/s1600/IMG_1558.JPG" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Our farm, our house, and our lives have been under siege now
for seven, very long weeks, and time is still counting. Since the last week of
September, a steady stream of trucks bringing workers to address various issues
of twenty year old buildings and their long and much needed upkeep, have
arrived each weekday in the early morning with their ladders, saws, and
hammers. Beginning at the crack of dawn they have buzzed, banged, and hammered
the days away, fixing this and that, until the late afternoon when their tail
lights have drifted down the driveway, leaving an eerie, and temporary, silence in
their wake. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri";">We began in late September with the barn. A twenty year old
roof that had suffered under numerous hail attacks and the effects of time, was
torn off and replaced with new shingles. The whole structure was pressure
washed inside and out, displacing unknown numbers of spiders who had called the
rafters home for decades. Long tubes of dried mud from the industrious dirt daubers
that had lined the walls were washed away in sickly streaks of yellow and
orange. Rotten wood was replaced and the whole barn got a fresh coat of new
paint and once again it was a nice space to walk into. Hercules could not have
done a better job if this barn had been added to Eurystheus’s to do list. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri";">During this time when focus was on the barn, I fenced the
horses away from their stalls and paddock to keep them out of the way and out
of trouble. For weeks they stood in shock and in utter amazement at the goings
on around their world. Kitty, my older and alpha mare, continually pawed at the
gate in her furious disapproval of the situation and at the shunning they were
getting. In doing so, she eventually dug up the buried hot wire for the fencing
and managed to shock herself by hitting the exposed wire. Adding this insult to
her malady resulted in some momentary, and very theatrical head tossing and
airs above the ground. We reburied the wire and, after all work was done and stray
nails picked up, finally reopened the gates. My herd is happy again.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri";">The house project has been a bit more of a challenge to live
with however. Remodeling always begins with demolition and demolition always
means there is going to be a mess, and its magnitude is the big unknown. There
is also the issue of there being no privacy in remodeling while living in a
changing house. We have lived for years in a fish bowl out here in the country
with no curtains, because, there weren’t any close by neighbors to see us, but
now, having had a constant parade of tile layers, carpenters, painters, and their
helpers in and out of the house, has often left me wishing for a very large
sized invisibility cloak.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hIAanJXDg6A/VjkFSDIR6XI/AAAAAAAAB6Y/VltUraDPZ1E/s1600/IMG_1619.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hIAanJXDg6A/VjkFSDIR6XI/AAAAAAAAB6Y/VltUraDPZ1E/s1600/IMG_1619.JPG" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Simply leaving the house/farm while work is being done has simply
not been an option. There are so many unknowns when the sheetrock comes off the
wall, or the floor gets ripped up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There
are just so many decisions that are made before the project begins, but there
are even more that get made as it progresses, and these are the ones that have
required my input, my executive decision. So for 99% of the time of our siege, I
have stayed here in the house or, in the barn for very short breaks, directing
this and correcting that. The 1% of the time, when I thought all decisions were
made for the moment, I left for a quick lunch. When I got back, I found that
one tile had been laid that was just not right, and stood out and not in a good
way. So now I wait for that to be corrected, and it will be, but, my bad on
leaving too soon.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Fortunately, during the process of remodeling, it can,
thankfully, have its lighter moments. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In
the removal of our old fiberglass shower unit we found that behind it, nestled
sweetly in the fiberglass insulation, was the currently uninhabited home of
some Mickys and Minnies. It looked as though they had been in residence for
some time judging by complexity of the burrowed tunnels in the fluffy pink
insulation, and also by a large amount of crunched up acorns that lay on the subfloor
that used to be under the shower floor. The real surprise was though, alongside
these empty nut shells were ketchup packets with obvious bite marks where the
mice had opened the packages. Our guess was that these house mouses had been
dipping their acorns in the ketchup for a little extra flavor. Maybe they were
tiny chefs? Our house is set under a canopy of large oaks and so finding the
stashed acorns was not a total surprise, but ketchup packages? Where in the
heck did they get them and how did they haul them all the way under the house
and up the walls to their hideaway, and better yet, why?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-j9vT5MuRWXc/VjkFgTQRu0I/AAAAAAAAB6g/yYQGsNyeRc8/s1600/IMG_1629.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-j9vT5MuRWXc/VjkFgTQRu0I/AAAAAAAAB6g/yYQGsNyeRc8/s200/IMG_1629.JPG" width="150" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri";">The carpet is being ripped up today and is being replaced
with new. Twenty years of history peeled like an onion, every cat and dog who
left their mark, every spilled blob of paint, and every uh-oh is being erased
and their attached memories will soon be forgotten and there will be a certain poignancy
in their fading away. Each of their marks told a story, the stories of my
children’s youth and how they lived in this space they called their rooms. With
time I hope that these remodeled rooms will be filled with new memories that
will be added to the fabric of this house, only cleaner I hope and will perhaps
last well until I leave this house for the last time. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri";">To live in any house is a responsibility. It is important to take care of it
and to be a good steward for the next person who will share the running history
with these walls and floors, living under the shade of this roof. Twenty years
ago when we built this house we built with a strong emphasis on the bones and
regrettably needed to use some lesser quality finish materials and details as
place cards. We have had to wait until now to finish the details like I had
wanted to do then, and I am glad to have this chance to do it. I designed this
house, and feel it is part of my legacy, and not a tiny one, to me. I had wanted
to leave this house in better shape than it had been in for a while, and so now
in its closing moments of remodeling for this project, this process has been worth the pain. There is
certainly more left to do. There always will be. The process is continual, but after
twenty years of waiting, we have made a good start.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-1ZS0jk7mJSo/VjkFyuLw4DI/AAAAAAAAB6o/eQhHSDxNeRU/s1600/IMG_1631%2B%255B1253732%255D.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-1ZS0jk7mJSo/VjkFyuLw4DI/AAAAAAAAB6o/eQhHSDxNeRU/s1600/IMG_1631%2B%255B1253732%255D.JPG" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri";">I was not surprised at the stress levels it would raise doing all of this, and
it certainly has, but we were not new to remodeling and were resigned to its inconveniences. The details that needed attention, the
corrections, the changes, the dust, the roaming through the house to find a bathroom that still worked, and the intrusion into our lives has been
rough. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For the most part though, I have
survived. And I know too, that when I watch
those last tail lights heading back to town for the last time, I will be ready
for a serious massage, a very large and very cold martini or two, a very quiet
house, and in no, particular order.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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windhover farmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03169761146781566064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-136588102943602693.post-17036778304278063212015-09-15T11:29:00.001-07:002015-10-01T06:39:42.391-07:00Sunday<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-v1W0YkRwt8w/Vg03aSVaVBI/AAAAAAAAB5w/GybAy7O1CnA/s1600/IMG_1359.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-v1W0YkRwt8w/Vg03aSVaVBI/AAAAAAAAB5w/GybAy7O1CnA/s1600/IMG_1359.JPG" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The other
morning, Sunday, while still sleeping, I realized I was no longer dreaming and
the outside world beyond my involuntary imagination was beginning to shine
through the window and beckoned me to join it, and so slowly, I did. After
coffee I walked to the barn with my posse of dogs under a dark, clear blue sky,
thanks to the cold front that had come through overnight, to the whinnies of
the mares waiting for their feed. I knew they wanted, and are still expecting
me, to bring them pears from the trees in the front yard. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">There are
still a few pears left hanging but are well out of my reach, and these will
most likely drop and get eaten by first finders, and that includes but is not
limited to squirrels, the dogs, hornets, deer, butterflies, and raccoons. The
horses would be there first but theirs is a life of fences and restrictions
from doing such things. Left to themselves, they would sit under the pear trees
and eat pears nonstop, until they exploded, or foundered, in no particular
order of that. So they get no freedom there, only treats.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">These pear
trees have been very valuable to me over the years for many reasons; first and
mainly, we have planted them on each farm that we have lived on over the decades,
because their fruit is the core of the delicious relish that I make each summer
that was my grandmother, Miriam’s, recipe, but they have also been the enticer
to my young horses to leave the barn when I have first begun to ride them alone
and away from the herd. Once they learned of the sweet treats that hung, and lay
on the ground under the trees, they willingly marched away from the barn, boldly
going all the way to the other side of the house, out of sight of the herd. With
frothy mouths they would lower their heads and crunch with undistracted contentment on
the fallen orbs. Nothing matters when pears are in season, except for the
pears. But now, the season draws to a sad close and the mares, and all listed
creature above, will have to wait until next year’s pears, but at life's present speed, that won’t be
long. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">As I went
about my day on Sunday, I meant to make a list of things I saw through the day
but never made the time to jot them down. A few that I do remember are, a
butterfly dancing with its own shadow, an orange Fritillary, by size looked to
be a male. It flitted and flirted with a shadow butterfly below it for many
minutes. The sun was above and to the back of the butterfly and its shadow was
in hard outline on the pool deck below it, and the dancing shadow was as equally
mesmerizing to this guy, as his flitting about was to me. It was charming to me
to see how focused this butterfly was on his reality of his moment, that he was
courting and dancing with a wonderful dancer who knew and mimicked his every
move. Just like Ginger and Fred, they were together in perfection.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Later, I saw a Red Shoulder hawk fly in a
rapid whoosh, up from the woods to the edge of the pond where the north wind
was rising as it was pushed over the dam. The rising winds lifted the hawk and
it quickly rose as it flew in lazy circles higher and higher. The sun shone
through its tail showing its handsome black and white bands in clear definition,
and once it had reached how high it wanted to be, off on a tangent it flew and
was gone from sight.</span></div>
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<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">With the
weather’s change for the nicer, our weekend project was to reclaim some of the
overgrown trails around the farm. As we worked on clearing the trails back in
the woods near the creek, I was stunned to find that so many of our large Sweet
Gum trees have been girdled by the large, orange teeth of what must be, an army
of beavers. The sap from these poor victims is now oozing down their smooth,
bark less trunks, to the chips laying at the base of the trees. These trees
will all begin a slow death and will leave new holes in the canopy as they lose
their leaves, their limbs, and then fall. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The beavers have rarely been this destructive
to the Sweet Gums and it makes me wonder, why now, and why these particular
trees?</span></div>
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<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Beavers have
never been very high on my list of animals to have around when you have trees
and water, both of which we have a lot of, but my tolerance of this new and
recent killing of our trees is wearing their welcome thin to say the least. In
reality, I know that is a fantasy to think that “removing a few” will
significantly lessen the pack of them. No, they only just call in more friends
and family up from the bowels of the creek. There will always be, beavers.</span></div>
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<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">After our work
reclaiming the main trail down to the creek and cleaning up the camp site, we
sat in faded plastic chairs and splashed some rum over some ice. I had sadly
forgotten to pack the tonic but we did have limes. We looked down at the still
water of the creek which was now divided into long pools of clear as gin water.
I could see flat backed turtles rising and falling and an occasional ring
perhaps made by a Gar that I could not see.</span></div>
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<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Then one of
those mists of tiny bugs came floating down the creek, a grouping of hundreds
of tiny flying bugs that moved as one creature. Inside the cloud of these bugs,
individuals moved vertically, up and down, and they too danced like the butterfly
in the light of the sun. I suppose someone knows the answer to the why of their
behavior, but it was a beautiful thing to watch without being burdened by that
knowledge, and they simply became fairies in the gloaming of the afternoon.
They danced for several minutes, and then they, too, were gone.</span></div>
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<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Some things have
very clear end and beginning points, like taking the turn out of the driveway to
start a fun trip, the turning of the last page that says “The End” of a great
book, or disappearance of the last morsel of a really good cookie. These
moments are real and have hard edges. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The awareness
of the beginning and ending of a lot things, however, can be foggy and aren’t
really noticed, until later. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A particular
date may well be marked on a calendar as the seasonal change but the real
change of a season is more elusive. It is hard to tell exactly when the last time
is that I will cut the yard, jump in the pool, sweat from the humidity and
heat, swat a bug, or pick up the absolute last pear.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These moments happen like bubbles with an ebb
and flow, and life moves on until the cycle repeats itself again, next year.</span></div>
My apologies for no photos this post. There was a glitch somewhere. Imagination helps<br />
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windhover farmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03169761146781566064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-136588102943602693.post-2034931230204104542015-08-17T12:23:00.003-07:002015-08-17T12:24:52.706-07:00August<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">It is the end of the summer months. It used to be, as a
kid, that August got to be ridden to the very end, to the very last day, before
school was started up and fun time was over. In August’s wake the following
Labor Day weekend meant fireworks, barbeque, and the closing of the country
club pool with a day of races and relays. The end of summers were always bittersweet
and languid and I’ll admit to having always felt a gladness that summer and the
worst of its heat was coming to a close, and yet, it made me sad that another
summer of my youth/life had come and was gone. It is like the romance of the
end of a relationship that was not meant to be, but also the hope that another
one would come along. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">August is my birth month, the specific date falling on the
11<sup><span style="font-size: x-small;">th</span></sup>, a date which I have shared with my mother for all of my life, her
plan on that, not mine. This year was the first and only time we have not
shared the date, as she died last year almost two weeks after the 11<sup><span style="font-size: x-small;">th</span></sup>.
So the date this year was finally mine to have as a special day, just mine, and
somehow it felt disorienting and weird, like there was a puzzle piece missing.
And it’s not like we have had a traditional party together on the date in many
years, my plan on that, not hers. We usually exchanged gifts of some sort early
and then, in more recent times I went out of town to be away and was able to
savor “my” special day without sharing. In truth my leaving did not make “my”
day more special, it just made it separate, and underlying it has always been “our”
birthday. This year lacked any cake, ice cream, or balloons, which was fine
sort of, but it did give me some moments of retroflection to feel the ending of
something. My mother and I will never share the date of our births in August
again. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">We, once again, left the brutal Alabama heat and humidity last
week and headed to the mountains to enjoy the cooler temps there and visit with
friends. Mark taught his photography workshop, as he has done for many years
now, the workshop scheduled by using the time of my birthday as an excuse to
escape the dismal end of another summer. We met some old friends who we had met
at the lodge years ago and who we feel like we have known our entire lives, and
yet in truth we only get to see each other for four or five days annually. Somehow
we are able to pick up conversation as though we had only been in another room
for a moment, no time lost, we move on. Together we are just on the same page,
playing hard, relaxing, or finding some adventure for the afternoon, and
especially enjoying the dining and wining experiences that the lodge’s chef
renders to us all. This trip was no different in that aspect. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cyz6A0X0BAY/VdIx44oMzsI/AAAAAAAAB2Q/wWIi0SH27Dc/s1600/untitled%2B%25288%2529.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cyz6A0X0BAY/VdIx44oMzsI/AAAAAAAAB2Q/wWIi0SH27Dc/s320/untitled%2B%25288%2529.png" width="240" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">There on top of the ridge that the lodge sits on, the air is
cool and a nice breeze tends to keeps the no-see-um’s away. The air
is clear with a few distant puffs of clouds hanging behind the mountains on the
horizon. Gold finches chatter and flit around and chip monks fill their cheek pouches
with as much sunflower seed that they can stuff in and carry their loot back to
where ever their secret hiding place is. A refreshing cold front brought in
some especially lovely weather the other day. It was preceded by a rain shower
that caught us when we went out for a brisk walk down the incredibly steep
driveway and up the mountain highway that surrounds the base of the lodge. As we
huffed and puffed our way along the drops felt good and deeply refreshing. Our
piety returned and, once dried off, it was wine thirty.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">This place we come to, is not for everyone. Those who feel a
need to have entertainment shoved at them from every angle with a barrage from
which there is not escape, won’t like it here. Their comment will be, “There is
nothing to do”, and no, there really isn’t. There are no tv’s and even though
there is a connection to the internet if you have to, the perfect entertainment
here is sitting and watching the birds, the clouds, the trees swaying in the
breeze, listening to the motorcycles rumbling below as their riders take the
hairpin turns on the road below. There are walking trails to peaks that face
east and one, west to take in the different views. There are tennis courts,
gardens to admire, chickens to feed blades of grass to, horse shoes to throw,
fire pits to be sat around, books to be read, and did I forget to mention, there
are the fabulous meals to be savored. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Nearby there is a creek with a long smooth pool where folks
go to stack cairns in the water and in doing so create a place of beauty and
ephemeral zen charm, until they are knocked down by some bad little boy, or
from an increase in the flow of the stream driven by a rain somewhere up the
hill, accumulating until it reaches the bottom where we sit on the “birthday
rock” and watch young trout holding in the eddy line in the crystal clear water
at our feet.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">There is a deep blue lake where we take canoes and paddle
boards out to explore the steep coastline and feel the coolness rising off the
water. There are hiking trails too numerous to mention and waterfalls to go see.
There are places to get away and just sit and think, or write, under trees, in
the screened room, on decks built just off the trails, or just sitting in the
lodge main room overlooking the far peaks to read or chat. No, there really isn’t
much to do, and that suits me just fine.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">All places of paradise proportion like this, though, have a
flaw somewhere and this hallowed ground has hornets. August is their time of
year to be pure evil. We have run into them before and now try very hard to avoid
where they might have their nests in the ground. As the night time temps get
cooler, these bugs begin to get mad and pissy as they must
feel the change of season coming on and that their time in limited and so make
the most out being aggressive.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On our last full day
there I went for a morning walk on a path to the east, one that is well traveled
and clear, and I was hoping to not get crossed up with any ground dwellers. The
sunlight was starting to peek through the tall trees and cast long beams of
warming light to the cool ground below. In the beams of light and warmth all
kinds of bugs were trying to get some energy, and then I saw two hornets doing
a buzzing in circles fight with each other. Up and down the shaft of light they
fought each other vying for the heat. I stepped wide to their left to avoid
their possible wrath but one shot out of their duel and flew all the way across
the path and tagged me on my left hand right between my fingers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I quickly got to the top of the trail head without any
further stings and they had not followed me, but my problem was, I had to go
back by them to get to the lodge. I let the two dueling buzzers chill for a
bit, then charged my way past where they had been and did not wait to see if
they were still there. It is an amazing thing that adrenalin does to make the body
move faster and with more agility than it has by itself. I got back with out
further incident, found some bendryl, and waited to see if I was going to react
and have to take a dose of my epi-pen. My hand swelled to balloon size and
itched but I felt no hives coming on and that was a good thing. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">We finished out our last day back on birthday rock, drinking
some red wine and restacking more rocks. A mean spirited young boy who we had
seen the day before is suspect in having knocked down the previously stacked
cairns, and some of which had been balanced by a real master or very powerful witch. I just don’t understand
destroying something like these graceful piles of rocks, but I have never been
a young boy looking for trouble either, and that too is a very good thing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Anyway, we headed back home from our paradise to a parched
scene that today, is finally getting a much needed rain to quench the browned
and crispy plants. I have spent the morning scratching the necks of the horses
and feeding them the last of the pears that have fallen from the trees, and not
much more. Riding them will wait a day or two and they don’t seem to mind at
all.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Xzf7FCU_1OQ/VdIxjWcVrAI/AAAAAAAAB2I/m5lLXXsRJGM/s1600/untitled%2B%252811%2529.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="206" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Xzf7FCU_1OQ/VdIxjWcVrAI/AAAAAAAAB2I/m5lLXXsRJGM/s320/untitled%2B%252811%2529.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">August, is half way done. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p></div>
</div>
windhover farmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03169761146781566064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-136588102943602693.post-3237477649990703422015-07-01T11:38:00.002-07:002015-07-06T07:53:45.399-07:00good intentions<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I woke today with good intentions of having a productive day
on the farm, first to ride the horses, then cut the grass in the yard, bush hog
the pastures, spray the tomatoes and put roundup on the weeds, clean the house
from last night’s visit from the grandkids, check the pool chemistry, run the
dishwasher, wash some clothes, and so the list goes on etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In reality, I also woke with a set of arms
that screamed in pain from over use as a result of water skiing this past
weekend, the second such adventure doing so in twenty years.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nChfyIVMMJY/VZQwYJ_mqWI/AAAAAAAAB1U/8W5V0-_GU10/s1600/untitled%2B%25286%2529.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nChfyIVMMJY/VZQwYJ_mqWI/AAAAAAAAB1U/8W5V0-_GU10/s200/untitled%2B%25286%2529.png" width="133" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">thirty years earlier</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The first time back on a ski was two weeks ago and I did not
stay up long as I got tired pretty darn quickly and, surprisingly was not sore
after that time. This time though, felt so good that I stayed up for most of
the length and back of the bay of Soldier Creek. I crossed the wake with conviction
and turned and leaned and sprayed high banks of water just because it felt so
good to be doing something I used to do on a daily basis during the hot summer
months at Lake Martin. The muscle memory was back and I smiled as I glided over
the water. Today, though, the lactic acid that I built up a few days ago has
cramped my forearms into blocks of concrete, heavy and noncompliant. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">So I type for now, with these arms of lead hanging off my
key board. The grass is calling me to cut it but it will wait for a while and
the horses have headed off to the far end of the pasture to the shade. As to
the other annoying chores, they too will have to see me another day, unless I make
a serious rally.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">It really isn’t just about my arms from skiing, there are
other new muscles who have joined the ranks of soreness from yesterday having
to move the heaviest washer and dryer I could have ever imagined there being.
Our daughter was moving to a new place and had this combo that needed to be
moved out and so she was donating it to us to use as it wasn’t going to fit in
the new place. So out we headed bright and early to my pick up truck to go and
get these items moved. I turned my key to the truck, and it turned but would
not start. Over and over I tried flipping buttons around to see if I could reset
anything electrical. We read the manual’s trouble shooting guide and still it
was a no go, nothing, dead, and seeking a tow truck. Punting on this vehicle we
headed to the You Haul place to rent something that would start.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Finding a suitable truck, we headed to our daughter’s old
house and then, remembered we had left all of our tools to take a washer apart
in Mark’s car, back at the You Haul place. More running around to get them and
finally it was time to move the washer. We were quite surprised when we pushed
to tilt the thing to get the hand truck under it, that the washer had grown roots
and would not budge. Another more enthusiastic effort was made and we got the
thing on it and bumped it out the door with Mark on the important end of the
hand trucks, the part the holds the weight up. It weighed a ton if not more,
and my job was to try to not let the rolling mass take off down the very long
and very steep drive, with him leaning back to hold it back and me on the down
side pushing to slow the descent. Then we all heaved it up the ramp into the
truck, with a very close to failure effort. We were shaking and stunned at how
close we had come to a total state of sudden exhaustion. But the dryer was
still inside and so we repeated the same routine with it. This lovely combo now
sits on my front porch next to the dog bowls waiting for a chance to replace my
current washer and dryer, and I am anticipating a wait greater than a week for
that to happen. It might be easier to hook them up out there under the guise of
“you know you are a red neck when” for even contemplating the idea, but moving
them did not help out my skiing muscles nor my other ones screaming at me now.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">We had been to the beach house for a long weekend hence my
getting to ski then, a reunion from last year’s gathering of Mark’s siblings,
their children, and ours. It was a very full house with a whole bunch of
togetherness but as before, in a good way. It was noisy and boisterous with
lots of activity and everyone chipped in to help make things run smoothly. But
my being responsible for the opening and closing of the house, making sure
there was stuff for the making of the meals, the hoping everybody was having
fun, and all of the tiny stresses that hosting a large group entail added up
and when it was done, so was I. It was great fun, and then we drove the long
drive home, with me whipped, mentally and physically. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">My parents used to lease a house at the previously mentioned
Lake Martin when we were kids, and we spent the entire summer there every year,
until an evil developer of the area took the cabin from us. During those years,
especially during our high school years, every weekend my brothers had many
friends up to visit and so did I. We ate delicious piles and piles of thick steaks
that my dad bought and cooked for us on his Weber. We had everything that a
bunch of adolescents could eat and drink and we never gave a real serious thought to
the incredible generosity of my parents, especially dad to give us so much. We
had full tanks on our boats so that we could ski all day or just ride around
the lake, and all that was expected in return was that we behaved ourselves, and we generally did, sometimes. I think back on my growing up in
this water world utopia and think of my self and my brothers, and all of our
friends as incredibly lucky to have had such wonder experiences because my
parents made these efforts, over and over for years. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BWMjNy6kaVo/VZQxT1X3iPI/AAAAAAAAB1Y/Ha8tYk-2kJs/s1600/DSCF0173.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="133" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BWMjNy6kaVo/VZQxT1X3iPI/AAAAAAAAB1Y/Ha8tYk-2kJs/s200/DSCF0173.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Our being able to go now to a lovely beach house, and to
share it with others, is directly because of my dad’s insistence on having a
place to gather with family and friends, and made it happen. If I could tell
him so, I would humbly say, a much bigger thank you to my dad.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">It is the first day of July with the fourth coming this weekend.
My ill fated truck was hauled in shame to the ford place and I am waiting to
hear the damage report. Somehow I already know the news will not be good.
Somehow, also, I must get to the store to buy some ribs, or steaks are sounding pretty
good too. My plan is to do as little as possible the next few days and let myself
rest up so I can attack the farm chores, later. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
windhover farmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03169761146781566064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-136588102943602693.post-12640689203685715012015-06-15T12:32:00.002-07:002015-06-15T19:09:49.089-07:00A Farewell to Tony<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pJ40mIynGGY/VX8n4LEZyOI/AAAAAAAAB0Y/IUnXJ_0dW9s/s1600/untitled%2B%25285%2529.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pJ40mIynGGY/VX8n4LEZyOI/AAAAAAAAB0Y/IUnXJ_0dW9s/s320/untitled%2B%25285%2529.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I just got off the phone with my vet after making
arrangements for him to come tomorrow to do a kindness for my tiny pony
stallion Tony. Tony is ancient, and as I said “tiny”, Shetland size, but has
been a huge driving force in the past several decades of my life. Tomorrow we will
let Tony pass away with a kind injection that will put him to sleep and I will
bury him and say a fond farewell.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Tony came into my life some twenty some odd years ago when I
was beginning a breeding program with a few mares that I had bought and or bred
and raised. I was planning to use artificial insemination from shipped semen,
so I didn’t have to ship my mares off to far away farms, and also so I didn’t have
to deal with any very large, hormonally driven, stallions. My problem was that
I needed a way to tell when the mares were ready to breed without the expense
of many wasted trips to my farm that my vet would have had to make based on my
guess work and observation. A friend who knew my plight suggested that Tony
might be the trick. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">For several years I borrowed Tony for breeding season from a
lady who owned him but whose mares would not tolerate him being around them.
Since she couldn’t use or need him, I would go pick him up and for a few months, he
would stay in a tiny paddock near the mares, talking to them in high shrill
voice and swishing his tail, flirting shamelessly, hoping for a chance to prove
his man hood. When the mares began to show him the time of day and act interested,
then I would call the vet and he would come and check the mares to see how
close they were to the optimum time to breed them. In twenty something years of
being the teaser, he was, never ever, wrong. Sadly he was unrequited with his
amorous intentions with my mares but he never gave up his enthusiasm and
effort. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I finally bought him when I found out that the lady who I borrowed
him from yearly, had gotten herself tangled in a messy personal situation. Tony, as well as her other horses, had become trapped in the middle of her predicament and his future whereabouts to live were questionable. So I called her and arranged to buy
him, not for the 500$ she asked for him when I first asked his price, but she happily took my cash amount of
50$ instead. With that deal, Tony had a new life home.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">There really isn’t a way to tell exactly how old he is and
can only give it a good guess based on when and where he showed up years ago. I
think the story goes that he came down a dirt road with several young black
boys aboard, bareback and squeezing to all stay on. They didn’t know where he
came from but had found him and hopped on the tiny little man. This was many years
before I knew of him, so best guess is that he is possibly well over thirty
years old, at least. He has, until just recently been in great health with only
a few minor hiccups along his long life. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I quit the breeding any of my mares, years ago now, when bad
luck caused one of my prized, and much loved mares to die in foaling. Tony was
then retired from his official duties but still remained near to his herd of
ladies, usually tethered to a long line with a swivel snap so that he was free
to move about, with limitations. He became my moveable weed eater, cleaning my
fence lines and keeping the grass down. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">More recently as he began to show his age, I moved him
into the big barn, where he was tethered to the gate behind the barn so he had
a stall he could get into and eat his meals in, and then when he wanted he
could go out, eat grass, drink from the pond, or just lay in the sun resting.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">
It has been a good life for the boy here on my farm, and I am in his debt for all the help he
gave me. In the past few days his health has swiftly declined and, on Saturday,
Tony simply refused to eat. I am suspect of teeth being an issue at his age,
but the quality of his life will not be improved by any heroic effort my vet
might do to postpone the inevitable end. When we spoke this morning we both
agreed, it is time.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The good thing about having pets and being responsible for
the welfare of the animals we own is, the having an option when the time comes.
The fact that we can decide what to do for them when the quality of their life becomes
a downward spiral with no chance or hope of rebounding, is a humane and caring
thing. I have put too many of my animal friends to sleep. I have held them
until the life was gone, and have cried many a tear as I said good bye to them.
But with each, as they slipped into death, my consolation was that their
suffering was done and gone. I will simply not watch Tony starve and let him
suffer. It is time to let go. He is ready. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-4uUhI-rt3oA/VX8n6_kx5OI/AAAAAAAAB0k/SD22RA3hMTY/s1600/untitled%2B%25284%2529.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-4uUhI-rt3oA/VX8n6_kx5OI/AAAAAAAAB0k/SD22RA3hMTY/s320/untitled%2B%25284%2529.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I already know that I will miss his high pitched whinny
every morning as I walk to the barn to feed. He has been a huge part of my farm
success, and of all of our lives around here. He has been in our farm yard
since my children were babies and he has carried my first granddaughter around
like a trooper. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I will dig his grave
tomorrow and bury him with no line snapped to tether him any longer. Tony has
earned his freedom. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Farewell my little
friend. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p></div>
</div>
windhover farmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03169761146781566064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-136588102943602693.post-47887274802103742022015-02-25T16:59:00.000-08:002015-02-25T17:00:19.315-08:00Tomato Soup<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-73ME4umsPdY/VO5ucmdlb5I/AAAAAAAABy4/X_ihTW8NENs/s1600/IMG_0916.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-73ME4umsPdY/VO5ucmdlb5I/AAAAAAAABy4/X_ihTW8NENs/s1600/IMG_0916.JPG" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I don’t usually cook for myself in the middle of the day,
but today it was warranted. The weather sucks, and has sucked for a pretty long
period now. It has been day after day of clouds, gloom, and rain, all draped by
temperatures that have pulled the warmth all the way from the marrow of my
bones. Today, though, is slightly different. It is colder, and wetter. I needed
some soup. I needed warmth from the inside, something for the body that was
good for the soul. I went to my pantry and opened the doors.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I had recently re-fluffed my pantry. In doing so I had
thrown away bottles and cans of this and that bearing dates to be consumed by,
that were decades past, but hadn’t been. It was all prompted by our little dog who,
recently, made me aware that there were visitors living in the pantry. After
learning of their residency, we then soon trapped two Micky and Minnie’s who
had found themselves a nice little smorgasbord in the cracker and snack area
which I had not seen much of in months. The shelves of the pantry are deep and
things have tended to be pushed to the back and not seen, and forgotten. My
visitors had found a culinary heaven in the back of this one shelf and left a
mess which required, after their removal, taking the entire contents out and
assessing just how old the stuff really was, disinfecting, and restocking. So
as I stood at my newly stocked pantry, I looked at ingredients and their
potential to solve my need for warmth for my core.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Cans of pumpkin enticed me, but it was the box of chopped
tomatoes that caught me. Tomato soup was calling me. I chopped a nice long leek
up that I had sitting in the fridge, and put it in my soup pot with some EVO,
and turned on the heat. I put some celery leaves in there as well for that
flavor that only celery can bring, some chopped garlic and stirred as the heat began
to make a soothing sizzling noise. After the leeks had wilted, and before they
browned, I poured in a box of chopped tomatoes and added some chicken broth.
For some heat I added a bit of red pepper and for some smoke I added a couple
of shakes of smoked paprika. Then I added some freshly ground black pepper on
top and stirred again. I tasted and mulled over what else.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I went to the fridge and grabbed the roasted red peppers I had
sitting waiting for use and poured them into the bubbling mix. My indoor areo-garden
had finally produced me enough basil that it was time to prune some of the
leaves so I clipped a few and tossed them in as well. I tasted again. It was
time for the mix to meet the blender. The blender whirled and pureed the mix
into a beautiful creamy red goodness. I ladled some of it into my waiting bowl
and topped it with shredded parmesan and asiago cheeses and snipped a few more
basil leaves onto that. Then I sat to eat and enjoy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I don’t know where the first bowl went but the warmth
spread, my shoulders dropped and my mood brightened as I tasted the promise of
summer tomatoes in each delicious mouth full. Like eating pure sunshine, this
quick little soup in the middle of the day had nourished me in more ways than
one, and just like that, this soup had done its magic. I was warmed, through
and through.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The rain outside continues and according to the radar, will
continue for a while. The northern part of the state is predicted to get snow, and
possibly quite a lot, for here anyway. I do wish that we would see some but
this time is not likely. There is a strong jet stream ushering the storm system
and it is holding the line just north of our town, as it usually does. On occasion,
it has slipped south and has allowed a storm to bring snow to us, instead of
the numbing rain, so hope stays alive for a dusting at least. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">In recent months I have been spending a lot of time cleaning
out closets, drawers, the before mentioned pantry among them, and have been sorting
things into that which needs to be thrown far away, those things and clothes
that will be given to more needy (or perhaps to those who might fit my clothes which
have mysteriously shrunken), from those things which I will keep. It all began
with the closing down of my parents’ house after my mother passed, and in
preparation for an estate sale of their belongings. For months I sorted through
the drawers, closets, and attic deciding what was to be kept and what was to be
sold.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The hardest of all the decisions I have had to make are over
the photographs, and not the ones on the wall. It is the thousands of snap
shots, some in albums, but mostly, loose prints in a paper bag, or a box that
are really the time keepers of the lives that have come before me and whose
images are now my responsibility. I have looked into the eyes of relatives I have
no names for. I have sorted through countless black and white photos of babies
in christening gowns, felt the stern gazes of the pioneer relatives, the older
ones, the ones just off the boats from Germany and Scotland, and onto the more
recent ones of my grandmother in the full bloom of her youth and beauty. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have culled and culled but there is a corner
upstairs, still, with many boxes of photos I have become the default caretaker
for. They will all probably go into yet another box, to be put into the attic,
to wait on the next caretaker to decide which to keep and which not to
perpetuate. It will be their decision, though, not mine.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">But the feeling of loosening up, of freeing up my space and my
feeling of carrying too much baggage, had carried over to my own house after I
finished at mom’s house. I now have a huge pile of plastic bags by the front
door which will go to charity and hopefully be used in a second life. There is
also a huge red box outside by the big oak tree that has a whole bunch of stuff
that was cluttering our house and had no use, and so will be taken to the dump
when I have filled it to the brim. I began with my file cabinet yesterday, the
khaki one upstairs that I have used to keep up with my horse breeding business
for thirty years, and also the one for the kids, and all of their school
progress reports etc. Of course there is an enormous pile of photos to be
sorted through and decided on whether to keep or not, of horses, of our kids as
they have grown up, our farms, and our lives. It is a slow process. It takes
time to reload the memories.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Ironically, as we have been keeping our fingers crossed in
hope of bit of white fluffy stuff gracing us now, I came across a group of
photos taken when it did actually snow here. The shots are glossy prints complete
with the dates on the back telling me they were taken in December of 1993. The
shots are taken at our old farm. Our kids were young, preteens, and were
wearing the coats that they wore when my dad took us all on ski trips. In one
shot, our youngest has a huge snow ball made, holding it in her arms and I rather
imagine that it got thrown immediately after the shot at her older sister. My
German Shepherd walks with our older daughter in one, and looks to be glad that
the weather finally turned civilized. Kudzu and Kowaliga, two of my first Dutch
horses that I had breed are standing in quiet contemplation with melting snow
dripping off their coats. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">None of these shots made it to an album, or got put in a frame
but its’ nice looking back at them. They evoke sweet memories and take me back
to that moment in time where it did actually snow. In that moment, our world
stopped, and it was all white, magic, and beautiful. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">With a quick glance at the still gray and darkening close of
another wet and miserable weather day, I am losing hope that we will see the
fluffy stuff, maybe next time. I am thinking a reheat of tomato soup for supper,
or maybe the leftover chili, anything as long as it’s warm and comforting to
chase the chill away. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IbmKQc-147U/VO5uq1TyYCI/AAAAAAAABzA/FP86VAI2Ti8/s1600/IMG_0917.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IbmKQc-147U/VO5uq1TyYCI/AAAAAAAABzA/FP86VAI2Ti8/s1600/IMG_0917.JPG" height="320" width="240" /></a></span></span></div>
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windhover farmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03169761146781566064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-136588102943602693.post-26988241803974293602014-11-11T10:54:00.001-08:002014-11-11T10:54:17.664-08:00The Black Watch<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Today is Veterans' Day, the eleventh of November, again. As a kid, it meant not much more than a day out of school and that most businesses were closed. It was about a parade and seeing old men in funny hats adorned with medals and emblems, and lots of flag waving, and that was about it for me. That all changed three years ago, on another Veterans’ Day, 11/11/11. It became the day that my super hero, and veteran dad, died. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">My dad was a veteran of the Korean War, a war not so well known about and overshadowed by the larger World Wars which preceded it, but it was a fiercely fought duel non the less, and my dad was a paratrooper in the infantry there. This past history of my dad was all totally background noise in my life, growing up. It was in my father’s past, irrelevant to the present and immediate moment of my own life at that time. I recall mornings where I heard that dad had spent some nightmare time reliving his battles there, and my mother found him, still in his sleep, standing in a shooting stance firing away at some invisible Chinese soldiers. There was usually a bit of a joke about his having eaten too much spicy food the night before to evoke the specters that needed shooting, and all of the horror that he lived with in his memory was glossed over and taken lightly by the young girl that I was then. I really never knew, nor could I comprehend, what it meant to have been a war veteran as he, and so many others had been.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I really knew very little about the Korean War and have to admit I know less about it than I should, given that my father fought there and nearly died before helping me into my existence a few years after it was over. I saw daily, the photos on the wall of my cigar smoking dad, holding his machine gun, wearing a ridiculously tall hat, smiling with his comrades and buddies, waiting for the next fight. There was the shadow box that held his medals for bravery, valor, and actions above and beyond the call, etc. I thought everybody’s dad had the same version of memorabilia and life stories in their house. It was on a trip to Scotland, when I was nearly done with high school, that his reality set in to me and I began to understand a little.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">My dad had taken us on a trip to England and Scotland. True to his typical form we had stayed at the Connaught, caught the semi finals at Wimbledon with the Queen and the Queen mum sitting a few shoulders away, had enjoyed the wonders of the South Audley Street Pub, and covered the highlights of London before heading north to Edinburgh. We were going there to see the military tattoo, a large festival celebrating Scotland’s veterans and their military history. At this point I did not even know that the Scots had done any fighting with anyone but themselves after Robert the Bruce and Bonny Prince Charlie, but I was willing to be along for the ride, as it seemed to mean a lot to my dad for him to share it with us.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The afternoon before the big night time show that was to be held in the Edinburgh Castle, we were wandering through the castle’s museum and dad found a room where the names of soldiers who had died fighting in the Korean War were noted in huge open books laying on pedestals. Finding no relevance to my life, I wandered around in a distracted and bored sort of way that one does in similar situations, and noted the differences in all of the tartan plaids that hung on the stone walls.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">There was a docent of this castle’s museum standing in the room with all of us, saying nothing, just standing, fully decked out in the garb of the Black Watch regiment, kilt, knives, tall socks, sash and all. He was a red head and had a full, unkempt red beard to match. His eyes were a fierce cold blue and his presence was one of power and strength. Gradually my dad and him began to chat.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">There are connections in life that are random and some are destined. I believe that this connection on this afternoon in the castle was perhaps both. As this powerful Scot and my dad chatted, their stories became more involved, and they realized suddenly and with a bit of shock, that they had met before.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The story goes that on one assignment back in Korea, my dad was to lead the troops under his command, and to take a fairly random, barren and treeless hill, which was being held by the north Korean army and by the Chinese army who was there to help the north. It was a piece of real estate that the US army badly wanted and it was basically a suicide mission but orders are what they are, and so off my dad led his group in that effort.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">For hours they fought in the mud and smoke and were getting their numbers cut down to nearly nothing. Retreat wasn’t in my dad’s vocabulary and so they continued to slog it out doing their duty and being gunned down by the dozens. Just when all hope was nearly lost, then, through the smoke, chaos, and flying bullets, came the sound of bagpipes playing “Scotland the Brave”. In a surreal moment, up from their rear, marching into the fray and confusion was a division of the Black Watch Guard coming in to relieve and assist my dad’s group in their attempt to take the hill.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Dressed in the famous black and green tartan kilts, and with the sound of bag pipers’ and fife drums’ continual drone together the US soldiers, and my dad, and these Scots took that hill and won the day.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The irony of the moment of that day in Edinburgh, was the realization that the commander of the Black Watch group that saved my dad’s life, turned out, was now this docent, here, improbably talking with my dad in the Edinburgh Castle some twenty plus years fast forwarded. They had, indeed, met before. My dad and his kilted savior, left us and retired to a local pub for the afternoon.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> I miss my dad today, and every day, but will always have my memories refreshed on Veteran’s Day with his declaration three years ago that on 11/11/11, it was a good day to die. He was an old soldier at that point and had fought many battles of many types through out his years, and when the time came he was ready and he went. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">To all of the veterans, and to my dad, I want to say thank you.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">RIP Dad </span></div>
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windhover farmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03169761146781566064noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-136588102943602693.post-53470811511605961902014-09-17T14:22:00.001-07:002014-09-17T14:22:38.543-07:00Mom<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">There is truth to the fact that, at least in this present life form, that the only way to get off a mountain is by going down. And so it was as we ended our mountain top vacation, and down from the mountain we came. Down from our cool and lofty peak we drove, to home and the sweltering, humid, subtropical remains of an Alabama August. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We drove home to the heat, to the drone of the cicadas’ buzz, and to the news that in our absence, my mother had taken a downward turn in her health. We had left town on the Friday before, after saying goodbye and wishing her an early Happy Birthday on Thursday. On that Thursday, Mark had taken her portrait, as she had requested, well, more like persisted of him. When we had gotten to her house that day, she was in her living room. She was sitting up straight and proud in her throne on wheels, freshly coifed and made up, wearing a colorful jacket, and had smiled for Mark’s camera, taking his direction to turn this way or that.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The following Monday the 11th was her eighty fourth birthday. My birthday also happened to be that day, not by chance but by my mother’s shrewd calculation and a probable bribe made to the attending doctor of my birth, that it narrowly and miraculously landed, by mere minutes, on my mother’s birthday as well. Joint birthdays and parties were the norm growing up for me, and I hated them. I wanted simply to have my special day like all of my friends did.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">For most of my life I was the entertainer and host to my mother’s friends’ children for my birthday parties and I really got tired of the work it entailed. In my teenage years, I would spend my day entertaining these girls, usually at our lake place, dragging them behind the boat on an inner tube or on skies, and I grew to not be so fond of doing this role. In the more recent years of my adulthood, I have found ways to be out of town to avoid this joint party thing, and this year found us again in the mountains on my/our birthday. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">While we were gone, we did learn that our daughters had taken their baby daughters to her house and found mom’s beach girls, ladies who all went to the beach house together on occasions, there celebrating her day. There was apparently some pinkish wine served and a cake and from what I was told, mom had a great birthday party. Our birthdays shared another quirk. The sum of the digits that make up our age for that year have always added up to the same number. This year we were both twelve.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">When we got back into town and heard that she was not doing so well, it was not surprising, and not alarming. For the past several years, with both of my parents, it has been a roller coast, revolving door, going to and from the hospital, with one of them, or both being on death’s door. A week later, they were back home and kicking it. So one more up and down was not an altogether surprise to anyone. A few days later I got word that I needed to go see her sooner rather than later, as she was going down fast, and so I did.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">When I walked into her bedroom, I was surprised to see her propped up in a hospital bed, gazing with a blank stare at the ceiling, quite a contrast from the woman whose portrait Mark had taken a week earlier. I called her name and she turned to me and mouthed my name and reached for my hand. I asked her if the birthday flowers we had sent were pretty. She smiled, and said yes, and something about them being yellow, and then fell asleep before muttering more. I was about to leave when she woke with a startle and I went over to her and held her hand again. She just looked at me, and I said “I love you”. She squeezed my hand, and slept again. This time I left without her waking back up. We were told by the hospice nurse that her time was coming, and that the possibility another rally was not likely.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">For several days she fought the inevitable, and it was painful to watch her deteriorating condition. On my last visit with her, my brother and I stood by her while the nurse gave her some morphine to ease things for her. I told her that we all loved her and that it was time to just let go. Fifteen minutes later as I was driving out to the farm, my brother called and said she was gone. Whether the morphine had helped her over, or my words, or a combination of it all, she had released herself from this worldly body that had run its course, and my mother, was gone.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The funeral and all of the many details that a funeral of a notable personality entail, have now come and are almost gone. Three weeks ago, today, my brother and I began a journey to begin picking up the pieces on the day following the funeral. The journey began with our going to her house with the intent to unravel her belongings, to begin to sort them into estate sellable piles, and to eliminate the copious and varied ways that my mother planted possible security breaches, not just for her but for everyone in the family. My mother was a paper trail person, leaving hers and even ours’, personal information and numbers at every turn, in triplicate, in every box, in every corner, and everywhere. It was our job to find them, and to sort through all of the stuff that were the remains of her and my father’s lives.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In a brain numb fog I began with drawers, clearing them out and sorting what was junk, and guessing what was of possible value, either financially or emotionally. I had known my mother was a serious keeper of all things, but as we delved further into her belongings, this definition became a gross understatement. She did not know how to use a garbage can and had obviously never thrown anything away.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Then there were mountains of things she had bought as she had become older and less able to get up and do, and so we found that, in her recent years, she had spent her time and money in catalog land ordering things, ridiculous things, not just once but in multiples. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I have stuffed bags, and have waded through the artifacts of my parents’ long lives, and have begun to see that yes, while my mother was a hoarder, that she was also the keeper. My mother was the keeper of the keep sakes, of the family things, letters, photos, and memorabilia of her parents, my father’s parents, and of the many ancient ones who have passed on before us. I have read love letters from my grandfather to his soon to be bride. I have found the sweet notes my father left to mom on early mornings when he went out to slay the dragons.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I suppose anytime one cleans the drawers of anyone’s long time house, there is a lot to learn about the people who lived there, some of use and some best left unknown. I had not known that my dad regularly clipped his fingernails and dropped the clippings into the drawer of the desk that he used as his home office. I had never seen the racy “how to???” magazines that my mother had tucked away in the bottom of one of her drawers. In finding things like this it did make me more appreciative of the fact that we are all just people, even my parents, and we are all just imperfect humans on this ride. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I have found pictures of ancestors that I don’t know, each photograph taking me deeper into the lives of those that passed before me and who are part of who I am. My DNA comes from the people from these images, and mom kept them all. Perhaps she knew who many of the faces were. Some are marked with dates and names on the back but many are not. Who is now going to be the caretaker of the memories, of the nameless photographs, and for how long? My attic is full already and begs for purging lest I leave a mess for my own children to deal with when I die. Memories are like a flame that must be fed to be kept alive. The stories must be told and retold, the photographs saved, or like the flame, or a bubble, it ceases to be. When will my face be the unknown in someone’s attic and the days of my life forgotten and unknown?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Since my teenage years I can’t say that my mother and I really got along. That’s putting it </span></div>
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nicely. I know she was many things to many people and that as the first lady of this town, married to my father, the mayor for twenty plus years, she did some great things for the city and was loved by many for her work to help improve the lives of the folks who live here. Mother daughter relationships, however, are varied and complicated and ours was a perfect example. I did not live up to her expectations of what she thought a young woman should be, especially her daughter, and for many years I felt her deep resentment for this lacking on my part. I felt a resentment towards her in her being so judgmental about the things that I wanted to do, or what I felt strongly about. As a master manipulator, my mother could say one thing and make the world believe it, and underhandedly make my life miserable with no evidence to point to her. While I know she had her own demons and tragedies to deal with, it did not alleviate or help our relationship for the years of my teens and nor afterward. I felt that she did not know me, or really care to. I just did not do life as she wanted me to, and she always let me know it.<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Once in high school years, mom had some fancy photographer from England come a do a portrait session with me. I very uncomfortably stood in the living room with a dress on for the first shots. Then the fellow suggested a more casual outfit, which suited me much more better. The fine portrait was finally delivered and it hung for many years in their living room. Then it magically disappeared, when news of my eloping hit them years later. It was found recently it in the attic and was brought down. A hole, and the imprint of the shape of a fist reside on the faded picture of my face. I had heard at some point that she was somewhat angry that night.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Another case of her not knowing me was when I was to turn sixteen, and was learning to drive and thinking about all of the new wheels I might get as my brothers had done when they turned driving age. We pulled into the driveway one day and she said she couldn’t stand not telling me early what I was getting for my birthday. I was absolutely giddy when she said I was getting a Porche and I listened to her describe my new car with disbelief as my car turned from being a car into a porcelain statue of a “Portia” from a Shakespeare play. I held my disappointment then and did not tell her this story until recently. She had had no idea that, as a sixteen year old that I would have rather had the Porche rather than the Portia. Again, we were not on the same track. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I have been struggling with the question of how do I feel about the loss of my mother. In my last words to her, I did tell her that I loved her and meant it despite years of our guarded relationship. We did not get along well, but she was my mother, and somewhere in there that does matter and I had to find something in this process to make this make sense to me. As I dug further into her belongings I began to see her life in layers like the peels of an onion, from the old lady she became, backwards into her younger days, days when she and my dad were having fun in life, running to Europe, skiing in Vail, vibrant and alive. With each boxed up photograph I came across the images of the years of her life stared at me and it made me wonder exactly what year, which phase of her life and mine, did we get crossed up. I then found earlier pictures from my childhood that showed me a different mom, the tender, caring mother who held me and put stupid bonnets on me and dressed me in lace. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I remember the mom who came home one day from a luncheon, dressed in an impeccable pink dress suit, and she and I lay across my bed, making a barrier for our new puppy Skippy so he couldn’t get to the edges and fall off. She wore a pillbox hat that matched her suit cloth and she was beautiful. Skippy waddled around between us and eventually he chose to lay down beside her. This made me sad that I was rejected and asked her why. She replied that maybe he liked the color of her dress and that it made him think of his mom. It was a sweet moment and I wondered how she knew so much about being a mother.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The mom who I mourn for is that mom. That is the person who birthed me, who swaddled and rocked me to sleep. She is the one who taught me to make cookies and mud pies, and how to keep myself entertained. She was beautiful and had legs that I always envied having inherited those of my father’s side of the family. She was the connection to my grandfather who gave me my first horse and it was he who taught me how to act around horses. I loved to see her, and my dad, when they dressed up to go out to a party or to a ball. She was always especially pretty when dressed to the nines and made me appreciative of the fine dresses that my uncle Wilson designed for her to wear. I am part of her and always will be, and the fact that she and my dad now both are gone is stifling. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In thinking about all she taught me, the one that I remember that stands out is, that she taught me how to hold a puppy. Once, I tried to pick Skippy up by his neck and she told me that was not nice and could hurt him. I had no idea and had no intention of hurting anything but I had to learn. I had to be shown how to hold a puppy, and, ultimately how to be a mother.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Thank you for all, mom. I love you.</span></div>
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windhover farmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03169761146781566064noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-136588102943602693.post-29927688838667452982014-08-14T08:54:00.000-07:002014-08-14T08:54:00.688-07:00 and the sound of butterfly wings...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">And just like that, it is the last day here in paradise. It seems like it was so long ago that we set off to get here and were surprised by fabulous lasagna we had en route at that river rat hang out, now ages past. We have had a great time here at this amazing place, but the days have run together like a water color, blending and swirling the days and hours into a unnamed hue and it is one that will never be seen again. It is simply an ephemeral experience to be here at this lodge because time is elastic and the reality of the outside world is held in check for the period we are here. This lodge, this bit of heaven is a Shangra-La, an Avalon, often shrouded in clouds, a sanctuary from the world out there beyond the mists, with a magic that is broken only by choice in opening the newspaper or checking your emails. It is quite possible to be here for days with no outside communication, if you want to, and to just be here in this oasis of quiet, where the sounds of the butterfly wing beats and the chirps of the Gold Finches are the loudest noises to disturb the peace.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It took us a while to learn how to be here. This is not your typical hotel. There are no televisions and what telephone signals there are, are very sketchy at best. Internet is available, if you want to bridge some of the gap to the other world that lives outside the boundaries of this place, but most folks do little connecting time. The difference here is that there is the lodge, the center point and focus of being here. It is where all of the guests meet to take meals together, where it is comfortable to grab a book and kick your shoes off with a room of folks who are doing the same thing. It is a place where it is possible to be able to get into the quiet of your own mind and yet be instant friends with the person sitting next to you. There is a simpatico with folks who come here. Most are outdoor focused, interested in nature, art, doing outdoor adventures, and who do not miss the constant barrage of information that intrudes our lives at home, most of which is horrible news leaving us in a daily wallow of high stress levels about things we have little control over.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">When you turn your car into the driveway of the lodge and pass the moss covered little pump house at the base of the hill, it is suddenly quiet, like the quiet of a sanctuary before the service. There is an instant reverence felt as the car shifts to another gear to make it up to the top of the mountain driveway. The drive is steep and takes effort to climb, and then once at the top the sound of the gravel drive is soothing and says, you are safe and at home. The swing of the screened door and the feeling of entering the foyer is unlike any place I have been. Perhaps it is because we have been here so many times that I feel this relaxed energy, and I have become patterned to feel this, but I think the site, this building, and this mountain are the reason, and I think most who come here feel the same. It is this undefinable feeling that bonds the guests for the moments they are here and it drops the barriers of unfamiliarity. It has always been a great place to spend my birth week and this one was maybe, the best so far.</span></div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-K0-UJLgoALc/U-zVvK41NjI/AAAAAAAABvQ/bh-MxVQHEbs/s1600/get-attachment.aspx.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-K0-UJLgoALc/U-zVvK41NjI/AAAAAAAABvQ/bh-MxVQHEbs/s1600/get-attachment.aspx.jpeg" height="200" width="150" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">My birthday dinner, the other night, was capped off with a gorgeous cake made just for me by the chef, and hand delivered by Robert, the owner. It was a white cream cake with luscious layers upon layers of cream, cake, and strawberry jam, covered in toasted slivered almonds and topped with strawberries dipped in white chocolate. We finished what was left, off last night and I shared it with any one in the dinning room, passing among new friends whose names I did not know.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Over the past days Mark has continued sharing his photography knowledge to those who have asked questions and who have wanted to learn more about their cameras and how to take nicer photos. After class there is the sack lunch time, which we have spent usually sitting in the screened summer house, with friends, mulling over what to do with the remaining hours of the day. We have hiked, and we have canoed in a deep and clear blue lake where the water met the tree lined edge of the mountains and rose from there. I have fed the new chickens, in their newly built coup, blades of grass and have laughed at their silliness as they have jockeyed to get the grass away from the hen who first grabs it. I have marveled at the organic garden, so full of vegetables which make it to our plates each night for dinner, and at how the cooler temps here make working in a garden pleasant and fun as opposed to drudgery and toil in our humidity and heat back home. I have read and I have </span></div>
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written. I have drawn sketches, and I have talked with many people I haven’t known before and who I will probably never see again, I have sat in the rockers on the porch and just let the clouds go by. We have rebuilt the magical stacked rock cairns in the stream down on Rattler Ford, only to find them knocked back down after the rains came with the cold front, but thats okay, we will build them again, next time. We have eaten, and we have drunk in the whole experience and have enjoyed it all. <br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The inn keeper was taking reservation calls the other day and I over heard him trying to explain to a person on the other end who was planning to drive a six hour journey to this place for just one night only, and who wanted to know what the night life was like. Robert was tactfully trying to tell them that this was a very remote place and that the disco balls and rock and roll were not part of the scenery here. I wonder what these people will think when they get here. Will they get it? Or, will they sit bored, wondering how to entertain themselves and be angry because they simply can not? I will not know because, sadly, it is our time to leave tomorrow.</span></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-IUNRbmbPUI0/U-zWmSzr3eI/AAAAAAAABvg/aLUEDINMH38/s1600/get-attachment.aspx.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-IUNRbmbPUI0/U-zWmSzr3eI/AAAAAAAABvg/aLUEDINMH38/s1600/get-attachment.aspx.jpeg" height="200" width="200" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But for today, we are still here. I am happy and feeling the joy of breathing. Perhaps we will go back to the lake again today, who knows. There is no agenda to our remaining hours. Reality will hit soon enough once we head down the driveway to head home, but for now, it is all good. A very happy birth day was had by me, with hopes for many more. My birthday wish is for more to be had here, but that, is for fate to decide. We shall see. </span></div>
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windhover farmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03169761146781566064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-136588102943602693.post-50795302565600421662014-08-11T11:20:00.000-07:002014-08-11T11:20:13.326-07:00A Birthday, so far <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Today is my birthday. I will let the number of how many eons I have been on planet Earth slide, but there have been a few. At breakfast I had a surprising, and very rousing chorus of Happy Birthday sung to me by friends, most of whom are students of Mark’s photo class up here in the mountains of North Carolina, and it was sweet. My breakfast was served with a candle aboard, not lit due to a fan blowing it out before getting to me, but it too was very sweet. Then when I returned to my room, this lovely duck was sitting on a box of chocolates waiting for me.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We have returned again on my birthday week to this piece of heaven, this lodge we have traveled to for many years. It is a place that holds magic in the many memories that I have of being here previously. I always hope to come back, every time I leave to go home, never knowing if I will. But I am, here, now, and that’s a very good thing.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We left on Friday with no particular route in mind, only knowing the general direction we wanted to head, letting the miles roll away with nothing planned. We were not supposed to check in to the lodge here until Sunday, so this left us plenty of time to wander around the mountains and to enjoy being untethered by the unbelievably miserable heat and humidity back home on the farm. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Our first night we drove as far as the Ocoee River area, a river which was home to the white water part of a past Olympics. It is also a place that is very popular with folks looking for a bit of adventure rafting the river’s massive waves as the powerful water tumbles down the mountains. A constant parade of yellow school buses loaded with rafts of bright colors, and excited people wearing their helmets and holding their paddles, ride the road up to the top of the put in place. Once the rafts reach the bottom of the ride, they load up again to do it all over again. The river rats never seem to get tired of it.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">There are several restaurants along the route to feed these masses of river rats, mostly beer and bad pizza places, and not having a lot of choices to decide on we chose the closest, the Ocoee Gondolier. Our hopes for a great meal were not high. The menu, however, looked interesting and we asked our waitress what was best. She pointed us to the lasagna, and to the pizza, and so we said okay, and ordered both to share.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">A bowl was soon delivered to our table, a piping hot bowl of not your typical presentation of lasagna, of red sauce with gooey cheese with some pasta in there somewhere, that was so delicious that we were stunned. I had not had a sauce like that since my childhood and it was great. The bowl was spotless when the waitress brought the pizza. Again, no high hopes on river rat fodder pizza, and again were stunned at the freshness and goodness of a simple hand made pizza. It is nice to expect less and get more, and we did.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">After leaving the river area behind, we ventured the next morning into a small town further north. We happened past a parking lot full of ancient tractors and pulled in. Old men in their straw hats or caps, some in overalls, stood around these tractors with a proprietary posture, while their wives stood in groups nearby chattering away. We got out and walked over to see these ancient machines and these people who had brought them here.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">My mother’s father was a farmer in west Tennessee and when we were growing up we went each summer up to visit. Highlight of the trip was going out to the farm and getting to watch George, my grand dad, go about his day, feeding his angus cows, fixing fences, or doing other chores, but the best was when he got on his tractor. Over the years he had many, whose intended uses were varied, and so were their sizes and features. Walking among this group of tractors I recognized several that he had had at one point or another, Fords, John Deeres, and others. These renovated relics gleamed in their fresh coats of paint and their proud owners were more than happy to tell you everything and more about them. The coolest tractor and implement was the hay baler, where the tractor was parked </span><br />
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well away from the stationary baler. They were connected by a long belt, the distance intended to avoid catching the baler on fire, which drove a plank up and down stuffing the hand loaded hay into a hopper. It looked like an accident just waiting to happen with so many pulleys, sharp things, and ways to get caught up in a very powerful moving machine, but interesting to see work, from a distance.<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-X_PmlOlOgNU/U-kG1LNA7II/AAAAAAAABug/_11BBAxtd1U/s1600/get-attachment.aspx.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-X_PmlOlOgNU/U-kG1LNA7II/AAAAAAAABug/_11BBAxtd1U/s1600/get-attachment.aspx.jpeg" height="200" width="150" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We asked advice from one couple there about a scenic route to wander and they sent us out to first Joe Brown Road, which led to the road they had a farm on, Hanging Dog Road. I don’t really want to know the story behind that last named road, but took their word and followed the directions of how to get there. </span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Twisty, windy, twisty, windy, the roads never seemed to straighten out for long. Up we went and down, and in each turn there were small farms tucked in narrow valleys, most making the best use they could of the available useable land. We drove past derelict buildings, and stopped to photograph most.</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">One building in particular we had been told to look for was a fallen down church. It had been the childhood school of the old fellow who had given us the directions. White pews still sat in the now exposed sanctuary/school room. The steeple/cupola was still in pretty good shape but listed as the building hung to the side of the hill. Behind us, in sharp contrast, the newly built church sat in prim simplicity in its bright white coat.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Along the way we revisited the site of the first camp site that Mark and I stayed at on a trip to come back packing and fishing. We had gotten to the mountains in the dark, found a pull off, and set up a new tent in the dark (which is a story in its self). Early the next morning we woke to find ourselves not exactly in a wilderness, but more like in the middle of a hairpin turn on a busy mountain road and there now were a steady throng of cars and motorcycles busily going back and forth not very far from our tent opening. It was not the quietest nor private of breakfasts that morning by our small fire, but it was good to see the place and remember the folly of our selection of this camp site again after so many years.</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We wandered further along on the unbeaten paths and eventually made our way on time to the lodge where we will be for the next week. Back in our usual room, back with long time friends from trips here before, and newer ones too, it is good to be here. It is good to be in a place where nothing is demanding my immediate or anytime attention, like doing anything in the heat. This is vacation world, and that is a good thing on occasion, and I know too, that it will end. Today, though, I am happy that I am still here, on planet Earth, in this moment, on the day of my birthday. The full moon will rise again tonight and take its celestial journey across the sky line from our vantage here high on this mountain. What a nice, bright candle for a birthday night. </span><br />
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windhover farmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03169761146781566064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-136588102943602693.post-77760976569412316932014-07-10T12:21:00.001-07:002014-07-10T13:10:08.077-07:00The Fish Recipe<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Mark took this shot last night as we had just begun to eat our dinner, before the carnage that left no prisoners or evidence. He should have taken the "after" photo, spotless plates. There was an afternoon storm in the area and the wind was blowing a nice cool breeze so we were enjoying being able to sit on the front porch to eat without the bugs and heat. Plus I had spent the afternoon with a hose washing down the porch and it was clean and all of the cobwebs were gone. There was a mist falling and the light in the trees around us was glowing. Nice afternoon meal on the farm.<br />
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Since I posted the photo I have had many requests for how to, and info on the shredder for the veggies. At your requests, here is the basic: I am not a measuring kind so these are approximations. <br />
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The Marinade: Equal parts soy sauce mixed with maple syrup ( I usually mix 1/2 cup of each depending on how many servings you are doing)<br />
Sesame oil...1tbs or so<br />
Ginger....fresh grated is good but smoked powder is good too, to taste<br />
Garlic.....fresh chopped, or whatever you have again to taste.<br />
Black Sesame seeds optional, but pretty<br />
Mix all together.<br />
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Two nice pieces of sushi grade tuna<br />
Put into bowl with marinade, coat well and let it sit and come to room temp.<br />
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Shredded Zucchini, Carrot, and Onion Saute<br />
I used a Mandolin Slicer, a cool gadget that shreds, slices, and does all kinds of fun<br />
with your food to make it interesting. USE THE GUARD, open blades are very sharp!<br />
I used the smallest shredding blade for this. Might want to hold off on the wine until<br />
this part is done. Don't ask me how I know.<br />
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Zucchini.....2 average sized cut in half length wise then shredded<br />
Carrot....I used one but more would have been pretty too, and good<br />
Onion....1/2 white onion, cause that was what was left in the fridge<br />
Toss to mix and set aside. Heat a saute pan or wok with 1tbs olive oil and 1 tbs coconut<br />
oil, put on low and just keep it warm for now. <br />
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Rice....I cooked one cup of long grain with two cups water, cooking method up to you.<br />
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Cooking the fish: Heat saute pan with 1tbs or so of olive oil til shimmering. For sesame crust, sprinkle top side with seeds and put that piece in the pan seed side down, repeat with other piece. Depending on preference of rareness, saute to desired doneness on seeded side, sprinkle more seeds on the new top side, and then flip fish making sure you swirl the pan to redistribute the oil so it won't stick. Take sip of wine... when done, remove to serving plate. Pour marinade into saute pan to deglaze and allow to boil to reduce to a glaze. Scraped up the burned bits, that's where all of the flavor is...well, alot of it.<br />
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While the fish are doing there thing sauteing, heat up the other pan for the veggies and toss in the veggies coating well and keep tossing until the zucchini begins to clear and get slightly limp. Serve immediately, you don't want to cook til mush.<br />
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Arrange all on the plate, then drizzle the glaze on the fish and rice. I served it with sliced heirloom tomatoes from the garden topped with mayo, but that's optional of course. Enjoy the heck out it. We did.<br />
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Bon Appetit! <br />
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windhover farmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03169761146781566064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-136588102943602693.post-82367195331930863052014-07-08T08:15:00.001-07:002014-07-08T08:15:30.994-07:00FOUND DOG!!!!!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Yeeaaaahhhhh!!! Stella has been found! <br />
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Day four of the mysterious case of the missing Stella began with me trying to figure out how to get my computer to talk to my printer again. They had been estranged for some time and I really needed them to reconcile so I could print some more pictures of Stella to spread around the area. Just as I sat to begin, the phone rang. "Are you missing a dog?" was the first thing I heard from the voice on the other end. "Yes" I was and described the pooch to the lady on the other end. "Well I have your dog at my house". Glory be and thanks to all the powers that led to that line!!! Stella had been removed from the lost category to the found status.<br />
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The lady, Janet, said that she found Stella wandering beside the road a ways past Mosely's store and the ball park at the school, about a mile from the interstate. She said she picked her up because she had terriers and felt like this dog belonged to someone even though Stella wasn't wearing a collar and tags. She also said her husband told her she absolutely could not keep another dog but she wanted to take it home to try to find the owner, and so she did. Janet said Stella was very hungry, duh, and she fed her. This morning her husband made a stop at Mosely's Store and saw the poster I had put up there several days ago, next to the other missing pups and ponies, called her and she called me. Relief does not adequately cover it all, nor is thank you enough to say to this nice person who cared enough about a dog to pick it up before it got run over wandering in a place it was unfamiliar with.<br />
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From where she said she picked the hitch hiker up, Stella had to have covered serious distance to get there. Mud is crusted on her belly from an obvious creek crossing or two, and was muddy last night so the creek crossing was late yesterday sometime. We are talking about several miles of very rugged swamp land and creek crossings with steep banks and cypress knees that she covered on those short little legs and to get there she had to cross a very large field of very tall grass, thick, and stringy, not a terrier favorite thing to do. She was limping a bit when I went to the lady's house to get her, most likely an aggravation of her old ligament issue on a hind, but she was happy to see me and happy to climb in the truck. Right now she is waddling around the kitchen looking for more scraps of food that Gracie has missed. She is also quite thirsty. She does not look to have lost any of her circumference so she either found some food to snack on or lived on her ample reserves and just isn't showing the effects. But she is back, and that is what matters in a all's well that ends well scenario. I think I can breathe again.<br />
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Stella will get her bath in a bit, but this will happen down in the wash rack in the barn cause she surely will clog up the sink with the load of dirt she is carrying. Then later I will take her into town to her yard where she can go hide in her garage, in her lounge chair, and dream about her big walkabout.<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-AOlZ8MDxOOI/U7wH9PnK6XI/AAAAAAAABlM/nYmjaM5X9zc/s1600/get-attachment.aspx.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-AOlZ8MDxOOI/U7wH9PnK6XI/AAAAAAAABlM/nYmjaM5X9zc/s1600/get-attachment.aspx.jpeg" height="300" width="400" /></a>It does restore my faith that there are folks out there who make a difference and pay attention to the animals in the world and notice when something is wrong and do something about it. Stella is a lucky dog to have been found by such a caring person, and I am lucky on this one to be able to return her to her home. Hopefully she will live out her days from here on out with a bit less drama and live to a comfortable old age.<br />
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Welcome home the wanderer. Stella is back!!!<br />
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windhover farmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03169761146781566064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-136588102943602693.post-40341835830400970682014-07-07T15:52:00.001-07:002014-07-07T15:52:54.883-07:00Lost Dog<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">There are moments when you realize that something is wrong, very wrong, and the decisions that are made next may, or may not, be able to correct what has happened. Then comes the second guessing on the decisions that were made that led up to this present moment, which could have contributed, or be totally unrelated to it and have had nothing to do with it. It is a heart pounding, uncertain which way to move feeling of denial, panic, maybe I am over reacting and maybe not, and comes with an enormous need to do something, anything to try to fix it now. I have moved in this mode for the past days and so far have failed miserably to right the situation. It is not a pleasant thing to have to tell anyone that you have lost anything of theirs, but telling our daughter that I had lost her sweet dog, Stella, was one of the worst things ever.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Stella is, or was, (at this point we don’t know and are keeping hopeful), a nine year or so old Australian Terrier with some family relationship to our former terrier Jack. Female, of course, she is/was a beautiful, coarse coated, short legged/long bodied, circumferentially enhanced, broad headed dog with enormous dark eyes that peer out from under long bushy eye brows. Fondly referred to as “Pig”, due to her ample belly and amusing waddle, Stella had mellowed in recent years from an exuberant young puppy, into a older dog that quietly took on her new role to guard our granddaughter when the baby arrived almost three years ago. She would lay near the crib for hours, dozing and watching. As the baby grew into a toddler she learned just how far to stay out of reach of little hands who reached for her fur. Once this baby started to go to school during the day Stella was off duty and took retreat into the dark recesses of the garage in the back yard. For hours on end she slept until her family came home, then she would howl and talk in high shrill screams, spin in circles, and be animated for a while. Then after being fed, it was back to sleeping guard duty. Her life was good.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Over the past years Stella has come out to our farm many times, when taking her with them on a trip wasn’t the best option for my daughter and her husband. Playing farm has been such fun for Pig and she has always stayed out of harms way by being very careful and unadventurous. It was always good to be able to hand back over a happy but filthy Pig to them when they got back. While here her patterns were always the same, and her territory never grew. She was happy to stay with the program and always got along with whatever dogs were in the pack at the moment. When I was asked if it would once again be okay for Stella to come out for another weekend visit I said of course. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The 4th of July weekend was shaping up nicely going into it. The weather had cooled a bit, some friends were coming from out of town to stay, we had plans for eating many barbecued things off the grill, and there was going to be a rotation of friends and family through out the weekend. Stella was dropped off, to her absolute delight, to which she sang loudly and twirled like a dervish. She fell in with the pack and together we went to the barn for afternoon feeding and to her favorite place here, my tack room.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The tack room is/was her sanctuary here like her garage at home, her go to place when activity elsewhere was boring or if it was too hot to hang on the porch with the other dogs. She loved to sit in my wicker chair down there in the darkened room with the whirling fan overhead and the air conditioner making white noise and cold air behind her. Here she could meditate on her coming next meal with solitude and reverence. It was here that we last saw her heading to on Friday night before we went into fireworks mode.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We have learned that it is a good idea to send off a warning, desensitizing, and relatively quiet fire cracker like a bottle rocket before doing any further pyrotechnics, and so we did. The horses have learned to appreciate this and moved to the far end of the field, nonplussed but avoiding the issue. Stella took our warning shot the same way and made a slow waddling amble towards her place of quiet. We took that as a good plan so she wouldn’t be frightened. (We were told later that Stella tolerated loud sounds well and was used to them, which blows a few theories of the mystery.) We had a short burst of fireworks and the night was over. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Saturday morning, there was no Stella. When I opened the front door to feed the dogs, she was not among them. Nor, was she in the tack room. These are the two basic places she had ever ventured to and she was in neither. Figuring a possibility of her being bothered by the noise badly enough to move further away, I called my neighbor who lives across the fence and who has a pack of friendly pups to see if Stella had gone over to visit. No again and still no Stella. Panic hit pretty quickly, but was tempered by the fact that she was a known hide and seeker, often playing hide until she was well ready to come out to play, and might well be doing that now. We channeled our Marlon Brando voices and called her name "STEELLLAAA" and checked every hiding place we could think of, but no signs anywhere of anything, and no dog. I put up lost dog posters on the road, went to neighbors’ houses and asked if they had seen her, combed our farm and the neighboring farms over and over by golf cart, on foot, and by horse.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I put up another poster at Mosely’s Store, the information hub of our community, and source for fuel, wine, jewelry, and chainsaws. There were other lost dogs posted there and even a lost pony sign up, each indicating the sadness of the loss and the not knowing of their lost pet’s whereabouts and condition. I taped mine up next to them, and felt further guilt of my inability to find her and make it all better. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I have gone to the shelter and left a photo there. I walked through row after row of the sad faced, incarcerated dogs, mostly of pit bull breeding, to see if she was there. I have posted everywhere that I could that on social networking, but somehow I don’t hold much hope for finding her there.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Today is her third day of being gone and in each day of continued searching, all of the possible scenarios of her disappearance have run in a loop through my head. There are so many dangers out here, snakes, coyotes, bobcats and who knows what else that could have taken her. I try to put the thought of her coming to a bad end far away, but have to acknowledge it as possible. Another possibility is that someone has picked her up thinking she was a stray, hasn’t seen the signs I posted, and once they do they will return the little Pig to her home peeps. So far nothing is making sense. There just aren’t enough clues that fit, and yet Stella remains missing. Hope is fading for her return, but, in the absence of an answer, that, is what is left for now.</span></div>
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windhover farmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03169761146781566064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-136588102943602693.post-34060579563909897782014-06-30T12:48:00.000-07:002014-06-30T12:48:09.512-07:00The Gathering<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Since I first became aware of dream sequences that are repeated from time to time, my reoccurring nightmare has always been based on the unpreparedness scenario. In school days is was usually about my not having studied for the test for the day, or when I was showing horses, it was having my name called to enter the ring, and my not even having my horse saddled yet. Apparently my control freak nature comes out in my nocturnal moments and I can’t seem to find a way to solve anything. Chaos rules, and there is the feeling of total helplessness in that I am drifting, falling, turning, with no sight of land to catch me. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">More recently my typical journey into this nightmare world has involved getting the news, and usually the surprising news comes from my husband, that a large number of people were coming over for, perhaps a very surprising dinner that I had not planned for, nor shopped for. In this nightmare I am forced with the sudden responsibility for cooking for, and entertaining this invading horde of visitors. I know, doesn’t sound like the end of the world, but we all get to have our own set of nightmares, and this one is mine.</span></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-C-28RmUKpxE/U7G65xMbQPI/AAAAAAAABjM/aRmduTzh9Vc/s1600/get-attachment.aspx.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-C-28RmUKpxE/U7G65xMbQPI/AAAAAAAABjM/aRmduTzh9Vc/s1600/get-attachment.aspx.jpeg" height="200" width="150" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">So, months ago now, the idea was thrown out that my husband’s sisters wanted to try to get together as a family, somewhere like a retreat or reunion. He is from a large family, six kids total and this was going to be a pretty big project to tackle, plan, and somehow find a time when it suited everyone. Then as the idea began to take shape and become more than a just wild thought, Mark suggested we use my family’s beach house. There was an issue of would it be big enough to handle everyone. It would be crowded and a whole bunch of togetherness but looked like it could be done. It then became my job to check on availability of open dates on the cabin.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I have to admit that my early thoughts on this project being at the beach house were somewhere on the verge of my feeling like I was being put into one of my not so favorite dreams. I was really not looking forward to the idea of being responsible for the coordination, planning, hosting, and then cleaning up after such a large group, but I was assured that was not to be the case and that the sisters would handle it. I got some dates and tossed them to the group, found one weekend that worked for most, and the train ride of planning it began. What began months ago finally came to the appointed date, and it was time to head to the beach.</span></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zdL1GqXGf30/U7G7PB4EijI/AAAAAAAABjQ/lfVlah_uMqw/s1600/get-attachment.aspx.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zdL1GqXGf30/U7G7PB4EijI/AAAAAAAABjQ/lfVlah_uMqw/s1600/get-attachment.aspx.jpeg" height="200" width="150" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">After doing the usual stuff that nails down leaving the horses, the dogs, and farm, we left on Wednesday to head down to the cabin to open it up and also to get a head start on finding some sea food to eat. Mark’s baby sister drove her rental car which was stuffed with suitcases and snacks, drinks, and all kinds of other food for later. Arriving a bit before dusk we got in the boat and drove it slowly across the bay to find a waterside restaurant where we ate our fill of fish and shrimp till we could do no more, and headed back to the cabin for the night. The remaining group that included our two daughters, their significant other and their kids, would make a total head count of nine adults, two toddlers, and two infants, and were coming the next day.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Finally the cars began rolling in and then once everyone had found their rooms and had settled in, we all headed out for the beach and the water. Lawn chairs made their way out to rest under the shade of the big oak out front, and the toddlers had their water wings snapped on. Suddenly there was a new life to the cabin and the area around it that was surprisingly wonderful. It had been so long since we had come to the cabin when our children were still quite young, and my parents were healthy and strong. Suddenly the happy noises of the toddler cousins getting to know each other, playing with their sand buckets and splashing in the water, combined with the excited chatter of the older siblings and cousins as we all refreshed our relationships and the air was filled with a renewed energy and made the place feel happy again to me. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Since the times back when we used to travel with our kids and their friends to the beach to share the house and time spent there with my parents and my brother and his wife, the house had lost its joy when we visited it. Where once the house would be filled with many folks, in more recent time Mark and I have visited, we have been alone. The house would be quiet and the sounds where of the waves on the shore and a passing Osprey. I am part hermit and do enjoy a lot of solitude and being at the beach when there are no distractions is great, but I had forgotten what it’s like to be there with little kids, and lots of folks to catch up and laugh with. It was good to hear the chaos of the life bouncing along the days. It was great to see the beach towels drying on the porch railing and to smell the shrimp boiling in the big pot down stairs. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">There was also a nice flow to the wine and “A”dult lemonade. I mixed a batch as close as I could to my dad’s old recipe, and I think was successful in recreating a passable semblance to his famous elixir. It made me miss my dad terribly, and wished he could have been there to feel the joy once again in his house. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We spent the next few days in a blur of eating good food, enjoying the sun and the warm water and each other. The babies were good and there were many arms to take a spell with them, aunts rocking the crying one to sleep, and Gracie, our Yorkie guarding the other one. We had arrived on Wednesday and suddenly, it was Saturday evening, our last night. There was a point where it became so clear how much fun we had all had, and that sadly it was nearly over. The bubble would inevitably be popped. Mark got out his camera and began taking group shots with the afternoon sun casting warm rays over everyone in the moment. We shared another great meal of gumbo from the leftover shrimp, joined by some great hamburgers, and finished the night with some games and continued conversations, all of the adults sitting in the rearranged living room in a circle, and, it was sweet.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The down side to all this fun is Sunday morning and its time to pack up and clean up. Everyone went into worker bee motion to get it all done, and we got the floor swept as we headed out. Sad but smiling faces said goodbyes and hugs were sent around to all.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">No one wanted to say it, and didn’t have to, but all of us were keenly aware of how special this had been and how likely that it may not happen again with the same faces, but we all agreed we should try to. One by one the cars rolled away and the quiet returned to the cabin. As I backed my truck out from under the carport, I could easily imagine my dad standing on the landing of the stairs, smiling, waving goodbye, and happy that we had come. I was happy that we had, too.</span></div>
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windhover farmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03169761146781566064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-136588102943602693.post-51958293219485952762014-05-14T11:25:00.001-07:002014-05-14T11:26:25.004-07:00On a Drone Note<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Qisb8hl5nLM/U3O0MR5doSI/AAAAAAAABaY/PKE55rk0_64/s1600/get-attachment.aspx.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Qisb8hl5nLM/U3O0MR5doSI/AAAAAAAABaY/PKE55rk0_64/s1600/get-attachment.aspx.jpeg" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Rain is gently falling outside the open door to the back porch. A rumble of thunder here and there, off in the distance, gives a nice touch. It is lulling and sweet. My plans for the day did not include rain, but rain can give permission to change one’s plans, and so mine shifted. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">As to life on the farm, and deaths, in continuum from the last entry in blogdom, I wrote that I was not happy with the recent snake predation on wren nests and such and I also wondered why the starlings seemed to get away from being molested by the no necks and could raise their squawking babies with immunity. Well, I was wrong. The day before yesterday on the afternoon hike to the barn, I noticed, first, there was no irritating squawking noise from the starling babies coming from the gourd houses. Looking up, I saw the side of a snake, the unmistakable pattern of its skin, coiled there in the gourd, digesting baby birds. Not that I particularly wished the birds a death sentence, but finally it was quiet. The gourd was well out of my reach and there was nothing I could do, either way to deal with the snake where it was. So I left the shovel, for its potential use later in reckoning with the serpent, leaning against the fence.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The next day, yesterday, I had finished my riding, had practiced my drum playing in preparation for two gigs this weekend, and was beginning to make my way up to the house from the barn when I heard the most amazing and unexpected sound. There were two Purple Martins, either immature or both females I could not tell which, flitting around the houses. They flew into several of the houses and out, chattering and calling all the while. Pure music their voices are, lilting and light. The sound takes me to an instant happy place. In watching them, with a smile on my face, I really hoped they would not try to nest here since my snake situation had not improved from last year, and I did not want to see these two eaten. Then I realized that the snake who had been in the starling house yesterday, was indeed still there, and was just now trying to get down from the housing.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It hung from the gourd hole, kinked up and twisted, about a foot length out. It flickered its tongue and looked about not sure what to do next. Apparently the climb up to the house was lot more easy than going down was going to be. Its choice to leave was either to drop to the ground, some ten feet down or more, or to slither out of the gourd and go back up to the pole the gourds hung off of, and then go down the pole again. It had apparently not figured out either option.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">And so it hung there while these two martins flittered about only inches away from this snake, oblivious to it, just happy to be making musical sounds for me to enjoy for the moment. The martins finally left and the snake slunk back into the house to ponder its situation, its head just inside the house, peeking out. When Mark got home I told him about the stuck snake and so as not to turn away a good chance to practice his skills with flying his new toy, uh, real estate tool for showing property, he got out his new drone and off to the nest pole we went. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This drone, a four propeller driven flying thing, has a camera mounted on it and can be sent to incredibly high heights, and is a steady and stable flyer with radio controls. Mark set it on the ground and waited for it to warm up. The snake watched us from its perch above us. Then Mark set the drone in motion and up it went. The whirling noise from the propeller blades were enough to drive the serpent into a retreat mode and we could not see its face from the ground any more. The drone went up and hovered at the door of the gourd, taking video of what it saw. The video did later show the side of the snake as it hid its head into the farthest region of the gourd. The silly snake was still in there this morning and I am beginning to wonder at the relative intelligence of this creature at the art of leaving. It may well be still full, though, and not hell bent of leaving just yet and taking this opportunity to chill out and observe the farm below its perch. Who knows with snakes.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">So, rainy day, thunder, a day with a built in excuse not to do the things that probably should get done, like vegetation management, but perfectly suited for my spending a few hours playing drums. In my tack room I have a set of practice drums that are probably more antique than up to date, but function very well for how I practice. I put on a set of headphones and a cd of the music that I know our band wants to play at our upcoming gigs, and strike the plastic heads of the set, hopefully in time. Not as gratifying as a real wood and skin kit but good for hearing the songs and keeping the motor skills up.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Very easily, though, I no longer hear my tapping on plastic but go straight into the music in my ears, and I am there, playing with Santana, and the Allman Brothers. I am sitting right next to Butch Trucks and watching Greg as he plays the organ and sings, feeling the magic of the music they created in the years of my teens. There was so much great music made during and around the 70’s, and it still holds the test of time. I have no doubt that Greg and Carlos would not appreciate my efforts to help them along, but its nice to imagine I am there kicking it with them. And so I play their songs and tap out the beats, with the three dogs in residence laying undisturbed at my feet. </span></div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OWlYxjkN5CA/U3O0bFTTTGI/AAAAAAAABag/rL0Yz40aDQ8/s1600/get-attachment.aspx.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OWlYxjkN5CA/U3O0bFTTTGI/AAAAAAAABag/rL0Yz40aDQ8/s1600/get-attachment.aspx.jpeg" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">My batteries sadly died to my cd player, though, and I put down the sticks and headphones and walked outside my tack room into the barn aisle. Two of the mares were munching on their hay, standing quietly, the sound of rainfall on the metal roof above them ringing in a peaceful serenade. Cistine, however, had left her stall and stood standing as I have seen her do before, her body, under the run in shed but with her face just out far enough to catch the falling water that runs off the roof. I said something and she turned to face me and her head was drenched but she seemed delighted to be being rained on, face only. She is a very silly horse and likes to play with water.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Since the batteries had died and there was to be no riding in this rain, I pulled one of yesterday’s saddle pads over my head for cover and rounded up the dogs to head to the house. As I passed the bird houses, I saw that the snake was still there in that gourd, and coiled tight. The shovel is in the same place too, just in case.</span></div>
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windhover farmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03169761146781566064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-136588102943602693.post-78775017512957375692014-05-07T08:51:00.003-07:002014-05-07T08:51:56.592-07:00Feathers and Eggs<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Yesterday at afternoon feeding of the horses, I was throwing hay into the stall for Sunset, when I noticed that the nest that had been built last year on the ledge over her door, had faint noises coming from it. The noises were from the plaint plaintive peeps of baby birds, begging for food from a parent. As I backed away, I saw a wren with something in its mouth around the corner of the barn waiting for me to leave so it could deliver. It flew to the nest, the noises got more frantic, then they subsided, and the parent flew away to find more. In the knowing of the repetition of how things work around here, I held little hope that the sounds would be there the next day. They weren’t.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Last year when the little wrens made the nest in this very same, super safe spot inside the barn on that ledge, high away from dogs, cats, raccoons, and other predators the little birds did not take into account that snakes can climb, and like to eat little wren babies. Sure enough, last year, and the year before, and the others before that, the wrens make a nest in a place they think is safe, like on this ledge. Sometimes they have nested in a riding helmet left lying around, or in flower pot hanging on the front porch, or under the hood of the tractor in tidy small nests of grasses, horse tail hairs, and an occasional sparkly trinket for decoration, and they nearly all end the same way. It surprises me that they are not extinct. Every time, just when the eggs hatch and the young fuzzy babies begin the beg with that screech that begins the servitude of the parent to find that endless source of bugs and grubs, snakes find them.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Last year the snake, that had eaten the wren chicks from that nest, remained draped around the rafters for a day, digesting. It was a fat, heavy, yellow rat snake with faint markings, blending in well with the treated lumber we used to frame the stalls with. It lay there oblivious to the comings and goings of the horses passing under neath it, and I went around where it lay incase it decided to drop at an opportune time and land on my head. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This year there have been no Purple Martins to listen to either. Their nests last season were raided by both avian predators who took their eggs, and lastly by a very large rat snake who killed the babies, just before they were set to fledge and fly away. The parents abandoned the colony and I have only seen one lone scout earlier this spring. He didn’t even light on the pole that holds all of the gourd shaped plastic houses, but flew on. I do miss hearing them. Their happy clucks and chirps have made my mornings for years as I walked to the barn for early feeding. In a sad way, this year, I am actually a bit relieved that they are not back. It was too painful to not be more effective in protecting them, in a space I provided for them in the first place. The pole was complete with a snake guard so they could be safe and successful, but obviously not.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">And then there are the dogs. The pair of Canadian Geese that had been hanging around all spring had finally apparently nested somewhere down by the beaver condo at the narrow end of the pond. I had not seen the nest but the dogs did. The other morning at feeding time the pair of geese were in one of the paddocks plucking the seed heads off the tall grasses when I heard them start their warning honks. It wasn’t until I got back to the house that I learned what they were honking about. Following behind me came the two big dogs, each slowly trotting with a swing to their hips, with heads low and mouths in a funny, not closed, holding something precious way that only a dog who knows what it’s up to, can do.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Layla, the black lab was happy to show off her prize and gladly placed it between her front legs when she laid down on the front yard grass. She did her Lab smile and licked the egg and looked at me for my approval, then licked the egg again, and again. Hyphy, the other large dog, of unidentifiable genetic origin, obviously knew what the egg was about and forgot the licking part and went straight to trying to get her teeth in a place where they could do some damage to the shell. I convinced her that I only wanted to look at the egg for a moment and she let me pick it up, watching me carefully incase I might want dibs on it. The white egg was quite heavy and I gave it back to her. In very short order she cracked it, licked the contents until the shell was empty and then ate the shell. She had either done this before, or somewhere in her genetic coding the instructions for sucking eggs was there and gave her guidance. Layla eventually bored with her prize since I was not up for playing fetch with it, and I saw the egg laying alone unguarded. A glance back later showed that egg to be gone too. The geese continued their plaintive honks for a while, and the wren this morning held food in its mouth flitting around the barn looking for the mouths to feed, that were there no more.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">My real grudge with the snakes eating baby birds thing though, is, that I have a prejudice for wrens and martins that does not extend to the darn starlings who have nested in the martin houses this year. Their babies stick their ugly heads out the door and screech relentlessly for food and yet, no snake comes to quiet them. This is a total mystery to me and it simply not fair for the snakes to target the birds I like and ignore the ones who are a nuisance, but they did not ask me what I thought.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In earlier days, when I had not spent decades watching the animals that we share this land with, I had a rather childish attitude that the animals all lived in harmony and that rabbits played with baby deer while butterflies danced over head. It was most disturbing when our Lab of a few years back brought me the forequarters of a fawn it had killed or found. The dog was so happy and wanted me to know of its skills and prowess as a hunter. I was sick, but it was not my place to make a judgement call over whether the dog was evil or not. The dog was only doing what its instincts told it to do to survive. It would live to eat another day whether I poured some processed dog chow in its bowl for dinner or not. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">With all of this on going carnage and lethal establishment of the pecking orders, I still am in ways deeply saddened by these deaths. I am though, now more accepting of one fact that is, I am simply not in control of everything that lives and dies out here. I am not Mother Nature, and there is little that I can do to control the rules that guide the existence of the animals around me. My only choice is the acceptance of the fact that this really is a “snake eat baby bird/dog eat egg and or anything” world, and get over it, whether I want to or not, and do my best to stay higher up the food chain.</span></div>
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windhover farmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03169761146781566064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-136588102943602693.post-88819671507166445832014-04-28T13:40:00.003-07:002014-04-28T13:40:22.026-07:00Being Bored...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I once told my mother, on a long hot summer afternoon, when out of school session and no friends could be found to play with, that I was bored. I will never forget the amazed and befuddled look on her face and she turned back to me in astonishment. “Bored????” she spit out. To which I suddenly felt very sheepish and could have easily cut a hole in the floor and climbed in, covering my head and closing my eyes to my apparent error in voicing my situation. She went on to say something about me doing ANYthing, or just going SOMEwhere. I don’t remember the specifics too well. All I remember from that day was her look, and her admonishment of my telling her I was incapable of entertaining myself. I turned and left her room, and did some serious thinking that day.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> Since that day I have rarely had the occasion to be bored again, when left to my own volition. (That said, I do not do organized group meetings for that reason.) I found that by feeding my curiosity and learning to be creative, that I could take my own responsibility for how my minutes were spent and enjoy them. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">As a kid I learned to draw horses. It was gratifying to draw one and have my grandfather tape the drawing to their kitchen wall, and so I did many, many more of them. I read like a fiend, and then began writing my own fables, delving into my imaginary world no one else could see, bringing stories onto paper for someone else to read. I quickly learned that an audience giving feedback is powerful fuel for the creative, so back to work I would go. My interests have expanded since then, and I have learned to do a little bit of a whole lot of things, and while master of none of them, the challenge to improve keeps me entertained and somewhat sane.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Recently, Mark and I had the good fortune to have a visit from perhaps one of the most influential and inspirational people to my life, in a round about way. Our visitor, Steve, makes most folks' pitiful effort to avoid boredom in life, pale and trivial. He is, the Renaissance guy, and he, is always doing something, really well.</span></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dUp4T4nIvuw/U167l8yYAzI/AAAAAAAABZg/qTUKnolPwvY/s1600/get-attachment.aspx.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dUp4T4nIvuw/U167l8yYAzI/AAAAAAAABZg/qTUKnolPwvY/s1600/get-attachment.aspx.jpeg" height="320" width="240" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">From the time I first met Mark, in art class in college, I had heard a continual reference to this guy Steve, who had been in the army with him. They had been photography instructors on base in New Jersey together and had become good friends. The list of creative things that Steve could do was not only that of a super man, it was ridiculous at the level he perfected each and every one. He greatly influenced Mark whether Steve was showing Mark how to fly a falcon, how to paint a watercolor, how to cut a stone and cast a ring in lost wax, doing pottery, and this is to only mention a very few, besides working in photography. Together they were always busy and always doing something feeding their curious minds. Steve set a bar of excellence that was at first, off putting and his attention to infinite detail, intimidating. It is in his uber overachieving, influence first to Mark, and then later Mark’s sharing it with me, that has led me to try things I would never have even thought of, and, to try to also do them well. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The first time Steve came to visit us was many decades back now. We lived then on farm in a tiny house that we rented while we were still in college. My horses were out in the pasture, and our new chickens roamed the yard and their laid eggs by the front porch. It was a old house and had seen quite a bit of neglect, some of which we intended to fix up, some of it we hadn’t even noticed or thought of, until Steve came.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I woke the first morning to the sound of a hammer outside our window. Looking out I saw Steve out there fixing the gate to the chicken pen. Having taken it upon himself to see what needed to be done, he simply did it. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">He had brought with him some wines that he had made at his home in Seattle, a few reds and also a particularly incredible raspberry elixir. He sent me out of the kitchen one night and fixed a salmon, that he had caught in Puget Sound, frozen, and wrapped in paper towels and stowed in his suit case. Now thawed, wonderfully cooked, and delicious, he pared the fish with this dry and rich raspberry wine. It was heady stuff, and memorable still.</span></div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3gIaZZWRbv4/U163n6pGXZI/AAAAAAAABZA/NLmmyfdYj6Y/s1600/get-attachment.aspx.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3gIaZZWRbv4/U163n6pGXZI/AAAAAAAABZA/NLmmyfdYj6Y/s1600/get-attachment.aspx.jpeg" height="200" width="150" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Over the next decades we kept in touch by phone usually over the holidays or on Mark’s birthday. Steve visited every decade or so as his job as head of the graphics department for Boeing brought him to Huntsville to the rocket center there, and once in the south, we weren’t to far away. His wine making improved to an amazing level, and he was hired to teach courses in winemaking at a college back home.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We had never met his wife Deb, and over the years had heard about her, and their baby girl, who is now grown. So it was great on this visit that she was able to join him in a post retirement loop around the country in a VW camper. Again he brought more incredible wine. Together one night, they made a risotto with porcini mushrooms that they had gathered on their farm before leaving, and a pan forte he had made for dessert. My mouth drools at even thinking about the pan forte with its crunchy, not too sweet, and crazily spiced, goodness of cardamon and pepper.The lovely roses they bought for us were put in a pot that Steve had thrown back back in their army days and the flowers stayed fresh long after their all too short visit.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In a spring cleaning down in the barn this weekend, we opened some boxes that had not been opened since we moved here twenty years ago. To my surprise, one of the items was a watercolor that I had done back in college and it was my very first attempt at painting a bird. Actually it was two kestrels, a male and a female that Mark had trapped, as a direct result of his falconry skills learned from Steve. The birds were in the biology lab being studied for a project Mark was working on with his ornithology professor. This painting was the beginning of many years of my painting raptors, and eventually of my learning to train a hawk to the fist, once again Steve’s influence to blame.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It is good to have people to push you, to inspire you to try something, anything. Who knows where it will lead you. And “Don’t be bored,” as my mother said. Mark and Steve are two who certainly live that mantra. I am so lucky to have been influenced by them, and continue to be still.</span></div>
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windhover farmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03169761146781566064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-136588102943602693.post-11892832388579105272014-03-25T13:03:00.002-07:002014-03-27T07:44:46.671-07:00Repetitions, Again<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ykd8anhDiss/UzHZswnZiNI/AAAAAAAABYU/WF5snwMYf84/s1600/get-attachment.aspx.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ykd8anhDiss/UzHZswnZiNI/AAAAAAAABYU/WF5snwMYf84/s1600/get-attachment.aspx.jpeg" height="320" width="240" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It was officially spring this past week, and Saturday was one of the finest types of days that one could envision. It was warm enough for a t-shirt and yet cool enough to be so pleasant that wearing a light sweater was an option. With a sky of cool blue, grasses beginning to green up the pastures again, and trees wearing haloes of electric shades of chartreuse, it was lovely. It said spring was indeed here once more, and that is a good thing.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">On a rainy day preceding this particularly lovely spring day, I was in need of an upgrade to my cell phone, but quickly I found that I had a problem because my phone was already stuffed full and had room for nothing more. The photo roll was the culprit, so this meant I needed to ditch some photos, and lots of them. I began scrolling the thousands of shots stuck on my phone and began hitting the delete button in ernest amazement at how many stupid shots were taking up all of this room. Quickly though as I scrolled, a pattern emerged as the years rolled by in a captured image progression.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">With each spring, recorded in my phone over the past several years, I seem to have taken the same basic shots, over and over each year. In spring I have taken shots of the flowering trees, the camellias, the </span></div>
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garden cleaning out for summer, and then through the summer with repeating shots of being at the beach, or the mountains. Then the fall shots come with the repetition of the leaves in color and the occasional snow angel drawn into the few rare snows.<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-s7B60l7EtLg/UzHZL99TeuI/AAAAAAAABYQ/CCTBnnQDrLM/s1600/get-attachment.aspx.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-s7B60l7EtLg/UzHZL99TeuI/AAAAAAAABYQ/CCTBnnQDrLM/s1600/get-attachment.aspx.jpeg" height="150" width="200" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Scattered through out these repeating shots are the succession of the dogs who have run through my life, my horses, various meals waiting to be served, lots of shots of blue washed skies draped with wispy clouds, and more recently are the additions of my grand daughters. But all are spaced through the time line in patterns of rhythms in predictable repetition. I have responded to these things by taking a photo, over and over and over, again. Like spring, here, again. Click, and its on my camera phone, again. It probably won’t take me long to fill the camera back up, and probably of the same subjects, again. There was one thing, however, that wasn’t on the repetitive illustrations of my world yet.</span></div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9sjJ8Tec1PY/UzHYpOyKgJI/AAAAAAAABXw/h9Lm21069tc/s1600/IMG_0637.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9sjJ8Tec1PY/UzHYpOyKgJI/AAAAAAAABXw/h9Lm21069tc/s1600/IMG_0637.JPG" height="200" width="150" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Behind our house this time of year the woods below us fill with water and the whole floor of the woods shimmers when the sun sets beyond it, casting long shadows of the still bare trees on the surface of the dark water. It is lovely from our vantage, but intimidating. Since we have lived on this property, now twenty years, there are some areas that we have never set foot on nor even seen, due to it being either, very hard too get through thick brush, or because of our fear of snakes, mosquitoes, bears, alligators, etc. Out of the blue the other day, Mark very bravely donned a tall pair of boots, headed down the hill, and went out into the water and woods with his camera and tripod. He returned an hour or so later as the sun was fading, quite excited about what he had found and said that the next day I should join him there in the woods. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Reluctantly, based on the afore mentioned reasons to not go into a swamp, I followed him into the mid-boot high water. Snakes were on my mind, but it quickly became obvious that we were entering into an enchanting water world, despite the possibility of stepping on a slithery creature. Swamp irises and palmettos stood in bright green clumps and cypress trees grew tall and straight, surrounded by their rings of mysterious knees. A stand of birches lined the edge of the water to our left and their trunks were covered in papery bark of gorgeous pale pinks, salmon, and tans.</span> We walked on further into the woods trying to not disturb the leaves that lay below the surface of the tannin stained water.<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">At one point we stopped to asses where we were relative to the house. I had a general idea which way it was was and it was amazing to see that even though, we had not gone terribly far, from where we stood, the house was obscured now. With no frame of reference, it was quite easy to imagine being lost for some time in here. There were only the tall trees in sunlit black water as far as we could see. And we walked on, fairly stunned ad surprised at the size of this previously unknown water feature we had on the land. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We came to an area where some of the trees stood much taller, way taller. Here the water was deeper on our boots and there were deep ruts still cut into the mud below these giants. These were the tracks of the loggers who had cut these woods to shreds well before we bought the place. Why the loggers, who cut with no discrimination, left these mega-giants standing, is any one’s guess but my guess is that the mud was too difficult to bring the larger trees out from. Whatever their motive for leaving them, I am glad to know that such giants are a stone’s throw from my back porch, even if I can’t see them from there.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">There, probably, won’t be many more days that will be cool enough for me to be brave enough to go back in to see the swamp and its lovely trees without sharing the time with dragon sized mosquitoes and hefty snakes, but it’s great finding it’s there. For all of the years we have explored our land, that area was out of the way, and cleared trails led to other places more easily accessible. To find that we have a fifteen to twenty acre swamp that starts just below the back porch is pretty neat and it is always nice to find a surprise. Knowing there is a bit of wildness so close by is a wonderful thing.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">And yes, I did take some pictures with my cell phone, but just not as many.</span></div>
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windhover farmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03169761146781566064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-136588102943602693.post-10267562628251020532014-02-26T14:29:00.002-08:002014-02-26T14:29:32.820-08:00Vengeance<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The question on the farm that has been begged for answer going on a few months now was, where in the heck a short or a fault in the hot wire fencing was. Repeatedly over this time I have studied, repaired, retightened the tape, replaced the controller, and had hoped, I had it fixed. The next morning my efforts looked to have worked and the fence was untouched, but, then the next morning I would look out to see sagging places in the top strip of electric tape, showing clearly that one certain big brown mare had very little regard for the still inert plastic tape in her way to eating the green stuff on the other side of the fence. That silly mare knew when I had changed something about the fence and was careful not to touch it until her whiskers sniffing the wire told her it would not bite. Once she was sure it really wasn’t on, over the fence she would stretch her long neck pushing both the hot wire, and the mesh wire fencing below that, down.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">My once erect wooden fence posts have all been loosened by her pushing the line and she has stepped on and crawled up the woven wire mesh fencing below the hot wire nearly to the point where she could step over the whole thing. When I heard the entire line from here to the barn moan with her leaning over it the other day, my frustration level hit the that point, where it was time to fix it or kill her. If the day saw no other thing done but this, by golly this mare was not going to ruin my fences any further.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">My former neighbor, and sadly long gone friend, Col. Morris used to say that a farm needed a face lift about every twenty years. In his long life he solved this by simply moving to a new one every twenty years or so and starting over. We have now lived on this farm twenty years, as of January, and to say this place needs a complete overhaul, from fixing roof leaks, repainting, and general repairs on both the house and barn, is a gross understatement. Those pesky issues could wait but this hot wire issue though, had top priority. There is great truth that “ Good fences make good neighbors”, but also good fences keep horses where they belong, and other critters out. And thus the quest to fix the fence began like every job out here does. It begins with tools, which ones do I need, and where the heck any of them might possibly be. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">My theory had been that the grounding system to the fence was bad. So I jumped in and dug all thirty feet of that up, rewired it with new wire, and plugged the charger back on only to find it still no go. Quite frustrated with this result, I put on my glasses and began to study the wire carefully from the charger then down the line. I found a huge problem where the current runs via a large wire, under a gate opening, and then up the next post to run the next lines of tape. There it was, at the bottom of the post where the line went downward, a broken wire, and the remaining wire that was still buried under the red packed clay and, was no where to be seen. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I got a pick ax out of the tool room and began digging a new trench through this twenty year old, well packed red clay gravel gate opening. Very quickly, I had to wonder my sanity. Here I was, at “my age” out there flailing a heavy steel pick at dirt that was packed harder than well aged concrete, just to keep a silly young horse from single handedly tearing up my farm. “Do I really like horses this much?” I was asking myself as I wheezed and leaned on my pick ax for air. I was not sure. </span></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/--TjeDIyRxKA/Uw5pCFaHx3I/AAAAAAAABXU/WCFbJSPT7vM/s1600/get-attachment.aspx.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/--TjeDIyRxKA/Uw5pCFaHx3I/AAAAAAAABXU/WCFbJSPT7vM/s1600/get-attachment.aspx.jpeg" height="240" width="320" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I buried the new wire while the big mare stood watching my every move, made the new connections, and turned the charger on. Again no zap. The day was getting longer by the minute but I still kept at it. Eventually I had repaired, fixed, and replaced every variable that I could but my tester kept telling me that a very low current was going out.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I was about to cry, when I heard a very loud POP! I looked to the source of the noise to find my silly big brown mare with a very surprised look on her face. Her upper lip was curled up over her nose and she stomped and kicked in anger at this new situation and the surprise shock she had gotten when she had stuck that pretty little nose on the hot wire. Vengeance, was finally mine.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The fence has not been touched again by that silly big brown mare, and I have a pretty high level of confidence, that it will stay that way until, the next time. </span></div>
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windhover farmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03169761146781566064noreply@blogger.com2