September 10, 2008 – The Perfect Life had its share of grief today, including software problems that shut down my putting up photos on the website, gasp. It brought back some memories, especially of my first year on the farm in 2003.
  Before Izzy, or Lenore. Before Orson’s death. Before hospice. Or teaching in Granville. Before diabetes, or Annie. Or photographs, or spinal trouble, or frostbite.  Or cows, steers and goats. Or fear and depression. Before three books, and most of my friends.
 Another time, another place. When the Farm Journal was small and intimate, and there were no photos, and I could answer all of my e-mail, and I was just a plain old writer, which is a wonderful thing to be, and something I am quite proud of.
  I loved that awful winter, that first year, even the frostbite, and Carol, my first donkey. When the farm was an unimaginably mysterious place, and my life filled up with riches of all kinds, good and bad, and losses and sorrows, and great love, and a search for love and fulfillment.
  I am not much into nostalgia, not interested in looking back. I loved my life then, and I love it now, not because it is perfect, but because it isn’t. I got another of those many e-mails today enthusing about my idyllic life, and looking out at the vast and expensive list of chores that await me, I just smiled and and thought about how good life is, what a tapestry of many things. What a piece of art.