The baby barn swallows are leaving their perch high up in the barn rafters, the last one was holding his spot this morning when we came into the barn. He was gracious enough to let me take his photo before he leaves. Yesterday, he hopped onto Maria’s hand, she carried him to the barn door.
Puppies are like human children in one way, you look at them one day and realize they are growing up. Fate is approaching six months of age, she a great ride-along dog as well as a budding farm dog. Fate is the most intense dog I have ever been around, also one of the brightest and most curious. She loves to ride along in the car, she is fascinated by every movement, every change of light, every thing she sees. Fate’s love of life is infectious, as it her love of work.
She is an interesting contrast to Red. When he comes in the car, he lies down in the back seat and rarely moves. Fate is very rarely still. I liked this portrait of her, it captured her focus and intensity.
I am super sensitive about staying positive and never speaking poorly of my life. The world is drowning in struggle stories, and I’m with Plato, every one has a harder life than me. Still, it does suck a bit when a big and beautiful tree falls over on your pasture fence, spilling a thousand apples all over the ground.
This will not be a simple clean up. The tree sheared off a huge limb of our apple tree, it crushed our two Adironack chairs, it mangled our new electric portable fencing.
Here’s what it missed: our cards. the animals. Our house. The Dahlia garden. Our antique birdbath (by inches). The fenceposts. The barn. The water bucket. The barn cats. Maria’s Studio. The chicken roost. And our two beautiful trees, the apple and the white birch, were spared. The storm was intense, it took a lot of wind to blow down a big tree like that.
Still, it will cost a bit to clean it all up and set things right. Somebody will come by tomorrow to take a look, Tyler will help us mop up. We’re trying to decide what to do with all those apples, maybe store them in the basement, feed them to the equines in winter.
So it does suck, but it looks worse than it is. That’s my story, and I’m sticking with it.
Liam got right into the fallen tree and went after the leaves. There is a big mess back there, but no structural damage, I don’t think, to the fencing. We can’t be sure until we look tomorrow and clear some of the limbs and debris away. I confess that I thought warmly about a split-level in some leafy suburb with box stores and low taxes. But then I snapped back, the aftermath was beautiful in it’s own way, sort of haunting. This is the life we chose.
A huge pine tree blew down in a wild afternoon thunderstorm, it is a mess near the barn. We were fortunate in many ways. The tree didn’t take the fence down, it landed on a fencepost. It destroyed some temporary fencing and our two Adirondack chairs, it spared our old bird bath, it missed the Dahlia garden, it missed the animals and the barn.
There are hundreds of apples all over the ground, Chloe and the donkeys are at work already. We have some tree people coming in the morning to take a look. The story was intense, I was walking Fate in the town cemetery and I saw the wind come up and we just made it to the car. The winds were breathtaking, so was the driving rain. Mother Earth singing her song to us. Hey, I said, we are on your side.
We are trying to collect some of the apples in baskets, and we aren’t sure how much damage there is to tree. This is the tree that gives us shade and privacy when we sit in the back yard, we will miss it. But we are also grateful we weren’t sitting under it. The sheep are loving the leaves. It was a beautiful storm, in many ways, I got some photos of the aftermath.
