There is nothing like having the visit of a grandchild…
They bring back those things you have forgotten how to do
That shining, excited, gaiety…which lives in motion in youth.
Then it was time to leave us and go spend the weekend with Aunt Kimi and Uncle Cliff….bouncing, bouncing all the way.
From our world to your heart,
Linda Brown
So do you talk to the stars?
Sometimes I do…they are so beautiful, so amazing, so glittering, so vast.
Sometimes I stand on the ditch bank…my arms flung wide and tell our farm…how beautiful it is.
Even after a long day of working in my yard, helping with the irrigation, cleaning the house, painting fences…when the pain in my arms and back almost blind me
I still feel the most profound gift of this amazing place where Terry and I live.
Sometimes the breathtaking life surrounding us –is like a spell… The bats flitting in the gathering gloom, the last of the Barn Swallows feeding on the mosquitoes, the stars just starting to appear in the darkening heavens, the soil thriving and growing plants, the plants forming from little seeds,
It all weaves a pattern, like a spell.
From my world to your heart,
Linda
“And I learned what is obvious to a child. That life is simply a collection of little lives, each lived one day at a time. That each day should be spent finding beauty in flowers and poetry and talking to animals. That a day spent with dreaming and sunsets and refreshing breezes cannot be bettered. But most of all, I learned that life is about sitting on benches next to ancient creeks with my hand on her knee and sometimes, on good days, for falling in love.”– Nicholas Sparks
In reality…everyone’s world, everyone’s day is never made of empty spaces.
It’s made up tiny (but massive) jobs, tasks and steps undertaken here and there
Each job feeling twice as big in the beginning of the task
Then gradually taking shape; finally the whole process over and done.
Then there is the end of the day. Glittering thick with orange and red sunlight, as the night creeps up from the land; finally touching the still warm sky, brilliant light filling air with dreams!
From my world to your heart,
Linda
The wind has been terrible again…50 m.p.h. gusts, my poor plants are feeling crushed and flatted and battered and beaten.
Even though the winds have been blowing, like God is angry, everything once invisible has become visible in the sunlight
The soft clouds dance and flicker through out the day
While the dry, dry soil gives us visual belief in the unseen wind.
More and more we are seeing the summer birds returning. Breathing brightness into the sunlight
Filling out the tapestry of grass, trees, leaves, flowers, bumble and honey bees
Even though the spinning pounding wind as been most unusual…
The beauty of spring fills our eyes, our hearts, our souls and the growing newness of the earth!
From my world to your heart,
Linda
“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
“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
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
Life on a Colorado Farm 