Miriam's Table

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.

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.

Miriam and Bibb, my grandparents lived what seemed to me to be an idealistic life in that white

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.

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.

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.

 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.

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.

 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.

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.

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.


   

Spring is....

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..

 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

 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.

And that’s spring.    

Under Seige

 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.  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.

Fortunately, during the process of remodeling, it can, thankfully, have its lighter moments.  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?

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.

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.

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.  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.

 

 

 

Sunday

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.

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.

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.

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.

 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.

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.  The beavers have rarely been this destructive to the Sweet Gums and it makes me wonder, why now, and why these particular trees?

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.

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.

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.

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.

The awareness of the beginning and ending of a lot things, however, can be foggy and aren’t really noticed, until later.  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.  These moments happen like bubbles with an ebb and flow, and life moves on until the cycle repeats itself again, next year.

My apologies for no photos this post. There was a glitch somewhere. Imagination helps

August

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.

August is my birth month, the specific date falling on the 11^th, 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^th. 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.

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.   

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

 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.

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.

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.

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.

August, is half way done.

 

good intentions

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.  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.

thirty years earlier

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A Farewell to Tony

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 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.

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.

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.

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.  I will dig his grave tomorrow and bury him with no line snapped to tether him any longer. Tony has earned his freedom.  Farewell my little friend.