“The Great Spirit is in all things, he is in the air we breath. The Great Spirit is our Father, but the Earth is our Mother. She nourishes us, that which we put into the ground she returns to us….” — Big Thunder (Bedagi) Wabanaki Algonquin
HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY to each and everyone of you!
Love,
Linda
Nothing much is happening here. No adventures, no real worries, nothing that a good beagle can’t deal with.
Just Ordinary Days.
We like ordinary days.
Ordinary days…don’t have big problems to solve,
Or scary coyotes to deal with,
Or something hard to handle.
They just have the ordinary things to do:
Go with Mom and do whatever she is doing. Which means I follow behind and sit and watch Mom, while she does what she does
Or I sniff around getting the news, while mom does whatever she does
Anytime Mom gets on the four-wheeler I’m right there to go with her, all wadded up on the back seat with my body touching her body so she knows I’m safe.
Sometimes I sit up straight and help Mom drive…I lend her my nose so she can go where the best smells are.
Then when she is ‘doing’ something out on the farm, I take off and check out all the happenings going on from the last time I was up there two hours ago.
Sometimes I scare up a pheasant or two
Sometimes some Quail, or rabbits. Or the summer geese. But I never chase any of them. Mom say’s I’m a strange beagle, beagle usually like to hunt animals.
Well, not this beagle. I just like to gather news.
Once Mom left me up at the Upper End (because I didn’t want to go back home just then).
It was HOT walking all the way back home. I need to remind myself when Mom calls and I hear the four-wheeler start…I NEED to get back to Mom. The walk home this time of year is long and hot!
But the most wondrous time of ‘just ordinary days’
is when the UPS driver comes down the long lane to our farm house!
That is the best barking joy I can ever think of! (and if it’s the nice UPS driver, I always get a treat!)
Boomer
The time of idleness is over
The silence of winter is OVER!!!
The work has increased twenty-fold from winter
But…it is never a burden!
From my world to your heart,
Linda
“The whole earth was brimming sunshine that morning. She tripped along, the clear sky pouring liquid blue into her soul.”- Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie
After a walk down the long lane to the mailbox, I opened the little door to the mailbox and found a package sitting there waiting for me.
Looking at the return address I realized it had come all the way from Minnesota…Connie, from the Far Side of Fifty blog
Had a fun wee contest on the leaving of winter in her neck of the woods. She actually had two contests.
Anyway I won one and what an amazing prize I received
A beautiful hand-created card
And this amazing wood carving of a darling little house (I can even put a light in the back to light up the windows).
Craving wood is an amazing art…to look at a piece of wood and ‘see’ what it is trying to tell you what it wants to be—then tiny shaving, by tiny bit being able to bring the wood to into life as a new object is wonderful.
Thank you so much, Connie!
Love,
Linda
April left us, that wet and chill month, with the massive winds that searched into every crevice and ripped off shingles…the chill of the spring dusk causing the furnace to turn on now and again.
Still the plants woke, putting on a few green leaves, then more, until they studded the flower beds and shimmered the pastures in newness only Spring can bring.
The little humming birds have arrived…I think there are six breeding pairs here so far. The air around their little wings humming so much it it’s like a harp making music.
May has arrived and the winds have changed…growing warm and gentle instead of those massive things we had in March and April.
A calm time. The skies full of sunlight. A time of growing and acceptance.
AND MY LILACS ARE BLOOMING!
The first time in years!
MAY! What a joyous time!
Your friend on a western Colorado Farm,
Linda
The big fluffy clouds fill the sky, white and airy, casting shadows on the ground as a high winds slowly, ever so slowly herds them along from one spot to another.
The long and soft shadows move slowly over the grasses, and the irrigated fields
The dirt slowly absorbing the flowing water, turning dry soil into wet
The days start early, always by first light, the sun gradually lighting the farms, mesas, plateaus, hills, dales, knobs, and subdivisions…the cold air damp on the weeds and grasses this time of day, this time of year.
It’s very dry here. Dry enough farmers and ranchers are extremely worried. The Forest Service as issued statements saying no cows are allowed on the Forests this year (and if there are some long-time permits being honored…its only for a limited number of cattle.)
When one or more farmer gathers the talk is always about water. Those farmers in the Cedaredge/Eckert area are stating there is very little water for them this year. Very little.
Tiny amounts of water.
Terry talked to our Ditch Rider (Uncompahgre Valley Water Users) and he says we will have water. It will be short, but there will be water. (Our water comes from Taylor Park Reservoir around the Crested Butte area, then into the Blue Mesa Reservoir, through the Black Canyon then on to us….winding it’s way from here all the way through the Colorado River to California.)
Our day ends as the daylight finally thins way after the sun sets around 8:15 or so. Long shadows filling the lessening day until only night remains.
Long days. But a good way of living. Neither Terry or I could ever ask for more.
Your friend on a western Colorado farm,
Linda
Friday night, as the sun broke through the gathering clouds, sending dancing shadows upon the land, and the day was just coming into dusk
There in the little mist created from raindrops and sunlight
I SAW a RAINBOW! My first since winter. A low to ground rainbow hitting the earth like a multi-colored veil…all silent, yet wondrous!
“God puts rainbows in the clouds so that each of us can see the possibility of hope.”–Maya Angelou
Saturday and today are warm and lovely! Spring is in full swing! Finally!
From my world to your heart,
Linda
I go with Mom and Dad to do the water, all the time, I mean we go ALL the time.
There is still lots of trash in the water…
sticks, weeds, corn leaves,
things like that. And if it blows…the wind, not the water…there is even more trash.
I ride on the back of the four-wheeler, mom driving,
Dad leading the way to change water and check the screens for trash!
WHEE! Bay! HOWL!!! JOY!!!!
At night, although I sleep inside, I go outside randomly to see what’s happening here and there and everywhere.
I sometimes go by myself, and sometimes with Mom—Mom and I take a walk at least once a night.
We are always doing something.
Mindy and I do ‘stuff’ together also. She likes to rub her whole body under my chin purring the whole time. Or taking naps together.
But the thing I hate worse than anything there is in the whole-wide everything…is the CATCH THE KITTY game!
Which means…Mindy, Min-Min Lou comes up to me, rubs me under the chin, walks off like she wants me to follow her…
then gets that playful look on her face, (she knows I coming right behind…I mean like, get real…I’m right there ready to go exploring with her) and
she raises her back into an arch…then leaps up and runs off. I give chase, she runs faster. Finally, I stop.
She looks back and collapses on the ground– rolling around in the dirt with laughter. She knows I can NOT ever run fast enough to CATCH THE KITTY!
Believe me…this is NOT a nice game!
Boomer
This is an old story. Not ancient, but one of those stories which keeps repeating itself until the mind and body feels exhausted.
We are so cold here I actually have a fire in the wood stove again. What an oddity, but a fact.
We keep having amazingly nasty weather this spring. Wind…mighty wind, huge amounts of wind that sock you right in the face and blow around things even tightly fastened.
Then lots of cold gray clouds full of moisture, which never really drops on our part of the world. It rained in town one day, and just down the road a mile, but only got the ground wet here.
Wet works for it cleans up the air and refreshing the plants.
But for a second, on the morning of May 1,…before all the clouds amassing over the plateau become thicker and thicker — pushed along to cover the whole of the sky.
There is was…a miracle of golden morning light, shadows shafting across the rich green alfalfa field…and I was outside basking in that spill of light and shadows.
Lucky me!
From my heart to your world,
Linda
Today is Terry’s 74th birthday!
On every birthday Terry’s father would tell the tale of how obliging Terry was at birth.
For you see Terry’s parents, Jack and Marjorie Brown had a dairy not far from where we live now…just about three miles away.
Diary’s never take care of themselves. You can’t put them on automatic to run until you can get back to them. The cows needed to be fed and milk on clockwork basis.
Morning and evening. Fed. The milk hauled into the milk cooler, then swirled and swirled until cooled waiting for the huge semi to come deliver it to bottling plant.
Like all first-time babies (Terry is the oldest of a brother and a sister) he took his time all through the long night, until….
the sky started to lighten and the need to get to the dairy started to strengthen in Jack.
You see Jack ran the dairy all by himself, he was a one-man dairy farmer.
Then right on time. In the most perfect of wondrous ways, the new little boy arrived in the world.
All obliging.
“So I could go milk right on time.” Jack would announce.
Every year, on each and every Birthday. [Jack passed on several years ago]. just as the sky starts to lighten Terry always says: ” Now, Dad. It’s almost time.” And I always say “Happy Birthday, You gave your Dad a perfect gift and he gave you your life.”
We always feel most grateful, Terry and I!
Happy Birthday, my husband. 74 years and still farm’n!
Love you,
Linda
