Must everything be a mixed bag of the sweet and the sour, the beautiful and the gross, the joyful and the sad?
In the early afternoon, I came over to the farmette. I have to do my taxes today. There's no other time for it before April 15th. If I want Ed to answer questions for me (he's much more finance-smart than I am), if I don't want interruptions, this is the time for them.
But on the short walk from the driveway to the farmhouse door, I paused and looked around me.
It feels so... bucolic here!
As if I stepped out from the concrete world of an urban landscape into a nature preserve. It's all new growth, old growth, wood chips and old trees bent in weird shapes, it's out of control Scilla Syberica -- that blue flower that peppers the lawns and invades the flowerbeds and I dont mind it a bit, because it's so pretty. It's also creeping charlie that I see is a real threat this year in my flower beds, because I didn't pull it out last fall. Snowdrop's mom told me that the girl misses more than anything (more than her favorite deceased cat, more than my two now missing dogs) being at the farmette, like in the nearly 11 years of her life, with all flowers blooming, Ed taking up the couch, but always offering her a spot on it, the chickens even -- those poop generating machines that forced me so often to wash the bottoms of the kids' shoes because inevitably they would step in the chicken messes. I get why she misses it. As I look out at the hundreds of daffodils now ready to pop into bloom...
... I think -- I miss this landscape. And then I bend down to pull out just a handful of weeds at my feet (there must be millions begging for my pull) and I think -- why didn't I notice how much work there is here? Did I block the time suck, the oppressive feeling of never being done? Or was it that the moment of bliss, out on the porch at breakfast, when I would take in the beauty of it -- made me believe that it was worth it?
* * *
I wake up at the usual early hour but I force myself to stay in bed for a while. I had a month, just before the arrival of Henry, where I had mornings like this one -- no dog to walk, no chickens to feed, no reason to rush out of the comfort of the bed. I liked it, but after a while, I got nervous with that idle wake up. Each time, I had to come up with a reason not to linger just a few minutes more and sometimes that reason wasn't so obvious. Ed often works or reads from his comfortable nighttime spot (and he falls asleep in his comfortable couch spot). That would drive me nuts. I am like a little puppy that likes routine and predictability -- at least enough of it that I can do the daily stuff on autopilot, though always leaving lots of time to come up with new ideas for the day. And to daydream.
Breakfast, a meal I used to hate in my childhood, now my favorite...
... and then I head out to the bakery because it is, after all, Easter weekend and the family will be over on Sunday and I should do something over and beyond the usual.
And then to the farmhouse.
* * *
I dont know about you, but I am not a fan of doing my taxes. It takes so long to do it by hand! And yet, today, it was kind of okay. I was back in the farmhouse, spending time there over and beyond time I usually spend on a visit. Ed and I would put in a comment, he'd add some advice, and the rain pounded outside and the cats moved freely from one spot to the next. What's there not to like?
* * *
Big day for me tomorrow. It's been such a mixed week, a tough one in fact, but I am not giving up on working with dogs, though this time, I'll be bringing home a pup that is very young, so that I can take charge of her socialization. And she is of known parentage. There are a lot of good, calm, friendly guard dogs that make great family pets. Mixes of Rottweiler, Pitt bull, Doberman, German Shepherd, Chow Chow, Belgian Malinois -- the dominant breeds identified in my two pooches. But there are also too many that are too protective, too reactive, naturally defensive given their histories and their DNA. They deserve great homes, and love, and calmness, and patience. And some will be saved (Sadey). And sadly, some wont (Henry). But that sadness I feel for my two lovely big dogs cannot stay with me as I turn toward Millie, who is coming tomorrow. She deserves a joyful welcome and 100% of my attention. And she will get it.
with so much love...
