On Monday Titi and I returned from a week away. The 4th saw us going down to New Jersey to help our Grandma and Grandpa O prepare for moving at the end of May. That’s a long time away, you might say. But they have a lot of preparing they need to do. For a week we helped clean and fix things. It was not exactly an adventure as fixing things and cleaning up are two things I do fairly often, but it was a change in scenery and a change in schedule.
In the process of cleaning and fixing as many things as we could in one short week I think we exhausted Grandma and Grandpa. And nearly ate them out of house and home. I suppose both of those are side effects of working from breakfast to supper. You eat a lot and exhaust anyone who is trying to keep up. (Not to mention exhausting yourself.) I think our pace caused Grandma some distress as she feared we would overwork ourselves and . . . do something. This was a source of mild amusement to me. Her questioning was like an echo of almost ten years ago when, at the age of fourteen I was hired to help repair a basement. My job was to haul up five gallon buckets loaded down with chunks of cement. Teman and I worked at it for eight hours each day. The foreman of the job was so concerned by our unrelenting pace that he pulled us aside at one point and told us not to work so hard or we would hurt ourselves. Now . . . at twenty-three someone is concerned that working steadily at minor house repairs would somehow push me over the brink. One is tired after working eight hours on various projects around the house . . . but that is nothing compared to the exhaustion of hauling concrete rubble all day.
The night before we left for NJ it rained heavily. All rivers were flooded and there was a mudslide near home. All this had no effect on our travel . . . but it almost did. The Delaware river came within a few feet of flooding the highway down near the Penn.-NJ border. That would have been interesting.
Things Noticed
In the winter it is like time has stood still. You can leave for a week in January (or a month) and when you come back everything can look just as it had before you left: all snow. But in spring it is as if time has sped up. You’re away for a week and flowers that were just poking their leaves out of the ground are now in bloom.
What I noticed most was the grass had greened. When we left a week ago everything was a dry barren brown. We came back and the chicken yard had turned a fresh green. Hard to believe less than a month ago there was still snow lying thick on the ground. Fresh green grass is so beautiful.
Another thing I noticed on returning home was the quiet. Well, not the silence exactly, but the change in ambiance. Down in NJ (near NYC) there is always the sound of vehicles and, at frequent intervals, the wail of sirens. Up here as I watch the sun set behind the western hill there is the cool quiet air and the coo of morning doves. At night dogs bark into the stillness.
The Farm
Both of the female ducks are trying to sit on nests. This is the first attempt for both of them and I think they won’t be successful. I think they started too early in the year. Then there is also the problem of skunks, raccoons, and opossums who would like to eat the eggs. The ducks tried to hide their nests away but I think for true success they would need a marsh or a large pond with a island in the middle. Nesting on the banks of our drainage ditch is not exactly safe from any pillaging beasts.
The male ducks are bored without their honeys around. They sit in the water and . . . wait.
***
Spring is really here, with all of the projects that it entails. The apple trees need to be pruned. It really would be nice if I could clean out around the blueberry bushes this year, prune them, and maybe even mulch around them. I don’t know if that will be anything more than a dream. Since we learned of a U-pick blueberry place just over the hill where we can pick all the berries we could use for the price of $.80 per pound it is a little hard to feel motivated to keep up our own patch. It’s so much easier just to jaunt on down the street and pick them. So much less work. And Teman so far has been willing to pay for as many as we can pick.
I would like to put walls onto Teman’s cart so I could haul manure in it, if I ever got around to such a thing.
***
The past week has been brilliantly clear and warm for April. The sky looks like a pure clear blueness that stretches on forever. It looks fresh, healthy, and new. We live in a valley that runs north to south. The house faces east and I consider both of these features to be excellent for enjoying sunrise and sunset. In the morning the sun rises behind the house, lighting up the hill rising across the valley with the first rays of the new day. Then with evening the sun sets behind the hill across from the house giving us a full view of the sunset. As evening gives way to night the hill becomes a looming shadow, the last faint light of the sky forming a backdrop.
When the sun rises the line of illumination works its way down the far hill, creeping along like the cover of night being pulled back. Then, as the sun sets the shadow of night creeps in the same direction, the golden illuminated ground receding like the blanket of night returning. Perhaps a very dull fact of nature to some people but I don’t tire of watching.
I’m glad to be home.
And I’m glad spring has come.
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