The Day After

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Yesterday I began a post for this blog. I went through the usual beginning steps, started writing about the strawberry-rhubarb pie Dawn bought for number one son's birthday. A window appears. It seems that I've been booted off line and need to reconnect. When I begin the re-connection, it tells me my user name and password are wrong. I call my service provider. "Is your user name rhubarb?" Aaron asks. "Rhubarb?" "No." Thus ends my blog for that day. From the moment I step outside until 7:30 pm, I'm working. Dawn comes home and sprays herself liberally with repellant, thins the Buttercrunch lettuce,the radishes and weeds the cucumbers. Without her help, the harvest of those vegetables would be diminished, perhaps, lost.

Today is a relatively easy day in which I get to ride the Husquavarna, wash three loads of laundry, hang the clothes out to dry, transplant leftover tomato plants, weed onions, rototill the Kennebec potato patch, perform the twice daily bug hunt in the potatoes, rake clover I'd cut before it started raining, stake tomatoes, mix mole repellent to pour down their tunnels, keep an eye out for a couple of pesky rabbits, mix more organic dust to prevent Colorado potato bugs, work on a moose hide shield, show the Pooch how to chase rabbits, check the asparagus patch for new shoots, pick scallions to trade with the neighbor for horse poop, take a hike with the cat, shave for a change, cut stakes for tomatoes, sweep the garage floor, organize the 20 pounds of new frozen spinach into one cardboard box in the freezer and write the town clerk thanking him for acting on our request for a SLOW sign on our driveway which is also the town road.

Yesterday's post was supposed to be titled Call of the Wild. It'd include a description of animal(domestic and wild) activities. The sight of Buddy limping up to the porch when I went over to the Amish to put in a strawberry order still haunts me. His right foreleg got caught in the haybine during a mowing operation. "He's lucky he didn't get it cut off," was the comment I heard from one of the daughters. It isn't swollen or infected but the cut is deep. Dawn mentions possible severed tendons. I'm not looking forward to my next visit to the farm. I've watched the fuzzy brown puppy grow up. He's a shaggy, rust brown mix of numerous breeds who always greeted me warmly. The other curiosities-the doe with the tiny fawn, hoot owls at dawn, a sandhill crane flying low across the horizon,cottonwood fuzz filling the air like snowflakes seem inconsequential.