Maria and I are similar in some ways, so very different in others. She is a  creature of systems, she has a system for almost everything, and I am a creature of the moment, I have a system for nothing. I used to do the hay feeding all by myself, I did if for years, I grabbed the nearest bale, cut it with a knife,  hauled it out to the feeder.

The barn was generally a mess, some stacks higher than others, there was no rhyme or reason to it for me. Maria has an elaborate system for moving the hay around,  older hay to the front, fresher hay to the rear, she hops up and down the bales like a rabbit, choosing each bale carefully, so that future bales are accessible, evenly stacked, easy-to-reach.

When I do the hay, I think I always pick the wrong bale, she will sneak in behind me and re-arrange the bales in their proper order.

She has a system for many things – the flowers in the garden, art in the house, laundry, and of course, the organization of fabrics in her studio. This is how she gets so much dond.

I feel sometimes I am a chaos machine in the middle of order, and I suppose it is true, I am. When she returns from India, she will quietly re-arrange the entire farm, which I will have, despite my heroic efforts to be orderly, left in disarray. I’m surprised a systems person can live so happy with a chaos person, but the more I think of it, the more focus people like me give to people like her. We need each other, we are defined by the other.