Maria does not do everything well – she doesn’t cook much, shop at all, clean a lot, or wash socks very often – but she does an amazing number of things wonderfully, I married well, better than I had any reason to know. My former girlfriend is a gifted artist, as many of you know, but she is also a killer hay-tosser, she scampers up the rickety ladder like a monkey and flings bales of hay around like they were dishtowels.

She is handy with a hammer and nail, she loves to paint doors and windows, she pushes a hand-mower like a fiend, gardens, is obsessed with washing dirty dishes – they never last more than a minute in the sink. She knows how to make wood stoves burn efficiently, stacks firewood, takes no guff, manages finances, runs a business and a blog, takes photos, hangs curtains, re-arranges art objects on windowsills, speaks to every animal here every single day.

I love this photo of her sticking her head out of the hay loft to yell at me about hiring a tractor to make a path to the water in the pasture, it captures both her energy, her radiance and her cheerfulness. Sometimes I look at her – every day – and wonder how such a wonderful thing could happen to me. And she is even washing socks once in awhile.