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Halfway Done
October has swept in with its blazing flourish, its browning, crumbling, scything sweep, making the cheeks ruddy and the shoulders shiver, remembering the heavier garments that have hung ignored for months, the articles of garb we don’t want to use but for which we are grateful when we take them up again. And now, in the middle part of the tenth month, we are grateful. Our neighbor arrived Friday night with his loader and attacked the enormous pine tree that has reclined in his pasture since Palm Sunday since he hoisted it off our shared fence and dropped it on his side. Mrs. Orr and I reminisced about the day…
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Kingdom Of Remnants
I am looking through the glass doors, looking outside at the peach trees Mrs. Orr and I tucked into the earth several years ago, now standing bare-limbed in the cold air at the edge of the front meadow. The trees have never done very well in terms of producing edible fruit, but they are lovely when they blossom and their leaves provide a nice shade beneath which we sometimes sit in the Adirondack chairs in warm weather. Someday those trees will be dead and gone, and perhaps no one in future years will ever know that beautiful peach trees once stood in that spot, on that gentle rise in the…
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Down In The Dirt
Saturday was supposed to be a home day, a day of chores and catching up on rest and spending time with Mrs. Orr and sporting with Jinx. But a small possum made shreds of my plans and I had to spend much of the day undoing his damage, along with trips to town to obtain the needed materials for the repair job. So the hours unspooled and we found ourselves in stores and we found ourselves in a restaurant, and we found ourselves watching people and wincing at what they wore, how they spoke, how they acted. We were relieved when we found ourselves back on our road, greeted at…
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Land Within Reason
Out here in the country, we don’t have a trash pickup service, so we have to take ours either to the county landfill or to one of the smaller drop-off stations situated in various places around the county. The one we mainly use is a few miles from our house, on a two-lane highway that offers beautiful scenery year-round. Just before the turnoff for the drop-off station sits a small farm. Out in front of the house is a pasture with an old but still serviceable barn. In the pasture is a hay ring, and most times I pass the place, there is an old horse and a goat…
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Hodie
I poured a cup of coffee this morning and then let the dogs out into the back yard. Standing on the ice-slick deck, I listened to the sounds from the dark. Fog made everything sound close, amplified yet muffled. A deer broke and ran in the woods. I could hear the heavy rhythmic thumping as it leapt over logs and obstacles on its way to the far fence. Jinx was transfixed by the sound, but I suspect he knew better than to give chase. It occurred to me just then that so much these days is obscured by fog and darkness. I do not know all of what moves out…
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Auld Lang Syne
“Time, like an ever-rolling stream, bears all its sons away…” Isn’t that how the hymn puts it? Time to put away this exhausted year, my friends. I wish you all a very Happy New Year. May the Lord bless each of you and give you grace as we enter the next phase of our fading days. ~ S.K. Orr
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Nearer
So often in life, we have moments of awareness of the present moment, an awareness in which we think, “If only…if only this could go on and on, this feeling of peace, of contentment, of quietude.” Such is the present moment for me. The morning’s chores are done, and I have a soft stretch of minutes before I have to travel from my home and enter again the environment that abrades my soul every hour that I am there. But for now, Jinx is sleeping in his bed near me, his spotted paws twitching as he dreams of chasing or being chased. The (brand spanking new) heat pump is blowing…