-
Draws Near
From now on, to the end of this blog, I’m going to try to just put it all down as it comes to me, for good or for ill. All I can do is place my memories and my thoughts on the palette, and daub from there. *** I went to the landfill today to dump our accumulated week’s worth of trash. It was pleasant to cross over the mountain, down through the pass and into the valley where Daniel Boone labored and fought, all without a 401(k) or a Facebook page. The mountains still have a tinge of green on them, owing to the presence of good conifers, and…
-
Quietus, Hiatus, and Other Us’s
Since returning from our trip home to Texas, I’ve been poleaxed with a deep lethargy, augmented in no small part by the weather. The warmer climes of the Lone Star State were a lovely but too-brief respite from the chill we’ve had since we returned to the farm. This morning it was in the teens and neither of us really warmed up all day, even with the heat pump running constantly (a pox on the house of whatever maladroit conceived of the idea of a “heat” pump….probably an ancestor of whoever designed the modern cars, washing machines, etc.). I’ll observe yet again that the difference between the cold months and…
-
Mother’s Day
First things first — a happy and blessed Mother’s Day to all of my dear readers who are mothers. May your day be peaceful and may your hearts find some happiness in thoughts of your children or of your own mother, even if you are in the midst of sadness today. I remember Mother’s Day in churches in my younger years. Many of the Protestant churches had a tradition where all of the mothers would receive a red rose, and the non-mothers and the adult men would receive a small rose bud…red for those whose mothers were living, and white for those whose mothers had died. Several years ago, I…
-
Evening In The Tenth Month
As I write these words, I have a quilt over my legs. The cool night air is sifting through the screens on the windows and doors, and the crickets are scraping their little fiddles out in the yard, tuning up for their final concert of the season. I don’t yet know when the first frost will fall; it will likely be a bit later than normal, since we had such a lingering season of heat. But who can say? The earth in its tilting and turning trip around the sun may play a trick on us yet and dust us with the tiny crystals in a stroke of whimsy. All…