the good news is

The good news is: I don't have to worry about mice in the truck anymore!

The less-good news is: I no longer have a truck.

I took the 2004 Highlander in for an inspection sticker last month, expecting to hear that I'd need new wipers or a parking brake cable or some such, and hoping it wouldn't be anything very costly. Instead, the mechanic who does the inspections came back in about 3 minutes, handed me the keys, and said, "You can't drive that." Apparently there was major deterioration beneath the rear half of the truck, and it wasn't safe to drive at all, even the 4 miles to get home.

Perhaps suspecting that I had every intention of driving home, the mechanic disappeared into the back and the owner, who I've known for many years, came out, offered me a ride home, and said that if I left the truck with him for a few days he would find time to put it on the lift and see what could be done. He knows I go to great lengths to keep my vehicles running as long as possible. Whenever I have to shop for a vehicle - a process I consider about as enjoyable as choosing health insurance - I always book a pre-purchase inspection at this garage. There is no point in buying something this fellow doesn't want to maintain.

Well, when I picked up the phone a few days late, I heard, "Start shopping. The front end is as bad as the back, and even if I could find parts, which is unlikely, the work would be prohibitively expensive."

Welcome to Massachusetts, land of salted roads in Winter, and rust all year round.

My default reaction when something breaks beyond repair, is to first step back and consider whether I really need a replacement at all. How much do I really need it? Can I get by without it? Sometimes "doing without" seems like the better choice, sometimes not; when the dishwasher broke, I didn't last a week.

For the past few weeks I've been alternating between an unenthusiastic online search for a replacement vehicle, and pondering whether I can get by without owning a vehicle. It's not a simple question.

I bought the Highlander for Piper in 2017. Here we are at the pond, about to embark upon one of our sketching hikes. Good times.

 

~~~~~

pictures from several walks

It's been hot lately. Over 80 every day.
I don't usually install my air conditioner in May, but I'm considering it.
Some nights have felt airless, even with a fan on.
In MAY!

One morning after very little sleep, I got a foolishly late start on chores.

By the time I came in, it was 84F in the shade and I was soaked with sweat.

Full disclosure: that doesn't mean I was working hard.
It doesn't take much physical activity to bring me to that state.

These days I break a sweat walking to the letterbox.
But that morning was hot.

I could say, "I just haven't adjusted to the hot weather yet,"

but there's no reason to think I will adjust to it. I never do.

One day I took Piper to the pond for our walk.
We haven't been going there lately, and we almost didn't go that day, because there were so many vehicles at both entrances I had hoped to use.
I can't take Piper off lead if there is anyone else on the trails.

Fortunately, there are other entrances, and other trails.

Generally, no matter where we walk, even on our own little road, there are more people and biting bugs about.
We just need to be out early and back early.

Piper is not really helping with this.

If she would just get up from her bed, jostle my elbow and look enthusiastic,

it would be much easier for me to fall out of bed - I do rely on gravity to help with this - and get moving, so we could go for a walk.

Instead, I'm the one doing the jostling and enthusing.

Piper is perfectly content to sleep in.

But once I've gotten her up, she is happy to go for a walk.

Warning: Introspective Moment 
It's a surprise to me that it's taking so much effort to reactivate a simple habit - getting up and out at dawn - that was a way of life for decades.
It's a surprise of the, "What? Am I not that person anymore? When did that happen?" variety. Hmmmm.

End of Introspective Moment

It doesn't matter, really.

All that matters is, I need to get up and out early.
Yesterday we started at 8, and walked less than a mile because it was very biting-buggy despite my herbal repellent spray, and as soon as the sun was high enough to come over the treetops and reach the road...it was hot.
Today we started at 7:30 and although the bugs were horrible, it wasn't quite as hot. Humid though. Ugh. Tomorrow I'll try to get us out earlier.

Because this hound isn't going to walk herself.

Trust me. I asked her.

~~~~~~~

wordless wednesday

~~~~~

thankful thursday

It was cold enough to keep the black flies at bay for a couple of hours this afternoon.

It was also sunny enough to be very pleasant indeed.

A perfect opportunity to do Daily Markmaking outdoors!

I had help.

I had an audience.

I had a critic.

I had a deep blue sky and bright clouds and buds on thousands of branches.

 Buds become leaves in the blink of an eye,

and soon I'll be looking up into a closed canopy of many greens.

What better time to sketch branches of the massive red oak I admire every day?

I focused on a small section of the tree,

and used one watercolor pencil and one waterbrush.

The result: Daily Markmaking 858

An hour like this is such a gift.

~~~~~

sunday saunter

After a long series of raw or rainy days that had me coaxing small fires in the woodstove to take the chill off the house, yesterday was sunny, humid, and hot. Really hot. It may have topped 70F but I didn't check the thermometer. The black flies, which have been toying with us ever since the last snowfall, appeared en masse and in battle formation. I knew before I opened the door, as I could see the goats shaking their ears and making sudden short sprints in the paddocks.

Here we go.
Black flies, mosquitoes, deer flies, horse flies.
The hair is standing straight up on my head just from typing those words.

I'm going to try to start taking Piper for short walks very early in the morning. Piper has never been a morning person. Like LeShodu, who kept the whole herd on a Brunch, Not Breakfast schedule for her lifetime, Piper won't eat first thing in the morning. And even though dawn has always been one of my favorite times of day, after I've been up - not just awake, but up - on average every three hours throughout every night, I am not particularly sparky in the morning myself. So it will take a bit of effort, this experiment in early walks to see if we can avoid some of the biting bugs.

Today was Day One, and I persuaded Piper to come outside with me when the sky was greying but the sun had not yet come over the stone wall and through the woods. There was no one else walking on the road (I have seen more people and dogs on this road in the past few weeks than in the past decade) and the Invisible Dog That Always Barks At Us was silent. Our route was a narrow triangle of slightly more than a mile, and when the sun dazzled through just past the half-mile point, we began to see a few black flies. So...tomorrow I'll try to get my lazy self out a little earlier. Piper is a better sport than I am about getting out of bed and staggering toward the door, but only if I "go first," so I will have to be the driving wheel in this endeavor. Wish me luck.

~~~

p.s. I'm planning to get the Candy Roaster squash seeds in the mail this week.

Six people in three states have already emailed their mailing addresses, and I have LOTS of seed to share, so please feel free to join in! 

~~~~~

thursday retrospective

from the ground, up.

the moment snow became hail

raspberry (beret)

Sambucus

more Sambucus

forsythia (yellow bells)

red maple

Friday morning dawned cold (22F) and sunny. More snow predicted tonight and tomorrow. In other news, the crockpot is full of organic turkey stew and "move hay, fill woodbox" are at the top of today's Extra Chores list.

~~~~~

wednesday wittering

How is everyone getting on?

I hope those of you who don't have your own blogs will say hello in a comment from time to time. Ever since I tried to sort out that commenting glitch and in the process discovered that more than 1,300 people subscribe to Comptonia, I've been wondering who you all are and what you are up to. There couldn't be a better time to reach out a little bit and connect with friends on the internet, right?

blooming where we are planted

Is everyone taking care of themselves? Plenty of sleep? Eating well?

I've been craving fresh greens but resisting going to the grocery store. Suddenly I remembered how easy it is to sprout seeds. Funny how something that has been a habit winter after winter can just be completely forgotten. This winter I didn't dust off the sprouting jars at all.

But once I (finally) thought of it, a quick rummage produced a bag of organic mung beans. A couple of tablespoons of beans and some water, and in a couple of days there were plenty of fresh tasty sprouts for snacking, for adding to soup, and - a surprisingly successful experiment - folding into omelettes.

sprouts added to soup just before serving - warm and crunchy

A couple of weeks ago I signed up with Misfits Market for a bi-weekly delivery of a small box of organic veg and fruit. During the winter I'd considered trying such an arrangement for the pre-garden season, and when Staying Home For The Safety of Oneself And Others became the norm, that clinched it.

the top layer - fruit and more veg beneath

The first box arrived yesterday, and it brought both the fun of opening a mystery package and the challenge of using every item in the box before it can lose quality. Yesterday I had a lettuce and tomato salad for lunch - so simple, so good! - and roasted bok choy and carrots for supper. That's more fresh veg in one day than I'd had in the past two weeks.

salad again today - a treat

I like the company's mission statement, their ethos, their apparent passion for reducing food waste and providing access to affordable organic food to more people. But at the end of the day, it's the delivered product that matters. So...we'll see. After I've had another box or two - or three - I'll post a little review of my experience. Meanwhile, the company offers a referral discount code, so if anyone wants to try it, just let me know.

~~~

And of course, the other kind of harvest - cashmere - continues.

Slowly, slowly.

This evening I combed Lily of the Valley for the first time this year.

Lily is always one of the most difficult goats to work with. As I carefully, gently comb, talking quietly and offering treats, Lily chooses to sink to the floor of the barn like a hundred-pound pillow. She then stretches her neck to it's most uncomfortable-looking extreme, and twists her head around with an expression that suggests she knows death is imminent, and while she is resigned to her tragic fate she cannot help wondering "why?"

Every.

Year.

~~~

This picture is from yesterday's walk.

Piper is helping me check on a patch of trailing arbutus we noticed last Autumn. Epigaea repens, mayflower or trailing arbutus, is the "state flower" of Massachusetts.

Maybe this year we'll see it bloom.

I'll keep you posted.

Take care.

~~~~~

thankful thursday

I hope you and yours are keeping well.

If you are able to stay home, I hope you feel "safe at home" not "stuck at home."
It is such a luxury to have the option.

If you are among the people working to keep people and animals healthy, supply chains functional, and everybody fed, thank you so much and please take good care of yourself.

I am thankful that all are well here.

The hens are providing organic eggs daily.

Eloise waiting for the Daily Apple.

~~~

The goats have enough good hay to take us through, with careful feeding, to first cutting. And a delivery from the feed store last week provided my usual Spring top-up of supplies, which my Occasional Helper very helpfully came by to put away for me. I've missed having him here lately, but we usually work together on projects and although he was willing to come, I could not justify the unnecessary risk. (To him, to me, to the world at large.)

However, unloading 50-pound sacks from a feed order is always a solo job, and the bonus since-you're-here task of shifting a dozen bales of hay out to the "distribution centers" saves me a heck of a lot of heavy lifting and dragging for a couple of weeks.

It's uncertain when I will have Occasional Help again,

but I'm certainly grateful for last week's visit.

And I'm not the only one:

 Violet, the eldest, tasting the new mineral mix.

Bud, the youngest, waiting his turn to taste the new mineral mix.

~~~

It's been quite cold lately, but unless it is raining,

Piper and I have been taking daily walks along our road.

It's a team sport.

I do the looking...

and Piper does the sniffing.

 ~~~

There have been many "firsts" in the past week.

The first wood frogs singing.

The first robin in the paddock, first pomegranate finch at the feeder.

And literally overnight, the goldfinches began to color up! One day all the finches at the feeder were the same muted green, and the very next day:

 ~~~

In other green and gold news:

the marsh marigolds are coming along:

I hope you are finding many things to feel thankful for these days.

It's a gift we give ourselves.

~~~~~

brrr

When I checked the thermometer at 2 AM today, it was 20F. By sun-up and morning chores, it was a rip-roaring 22F. Water buckets were not just iced over, but frozen solid. This is why, even though I unplugged the two bucket de-icers in the barn, I left them in place so it would take only a moment to plunk them back into the buckets. And why I never unplugged the one in the more exposed paddock water bucket at all. This is not my first March in Massachusetts.

Although it was cold it was also nice and sunny today, and all the goats were very happy to spend the day in furry pools, nibbling hay, chewing their cud, or snoozing, until evening. A pleasant day in Goat World.

One nice thing about the return to quite cold: it prompted me to make a crockpot full of soup! And one nice thing about the habit of putting containers of "extra" food in the freezer is that making soup is just a matter of pulling out containers until enough contents have been identified to sound like good soup: turkey meat, candy roaster squash puree, carrots, a very rich broth made - also in the crockpot - from the bones of the whole turkey roasted a while back. All organic but the carrots. Add a little seasoning, leave it to simmer in the crockpot for a few hours, and that's it - lovely soup, served over rotini pasta, also from the freezer. I love that freezer!

A tiny but exciting bit of news: when I walk Piper in a few minutes we will carry up the package left at the bottom of the driveway earlier this afternoon. It is my first ever order from a welding supply house! (I told you it was exciting.) And you can guess what it is if you want to (Liz will probably get it in one) but you'll have to wait for the answer. I'm not going to confirm or deny until I've got pictures and a story to tell, whether successful or just a "learning experience."

Off to have a little walk, then chores. Too cold for the pond today, but a walk along the road here isn't bad. Lots and lots of things to sniff, and that - apparently - is what matters most. Get that sniffer ready, Piper!

~~~~~

saturday saunter

After a long, gloomy day of rain yesterday,

when I fed the fire all day just to take the chill off the house,

today dawned clear and bright.

And cold. And windy.

I waited til almost noon to take Piper to our favorite trails by the pond.

By that time, the wind had dropped and the air was warmer.

Five days ago, the pond looked like this.

There was still a lot of ice, but there were open areas.

We've had some very warm days in the past week.

Today, the pond looked like this:

The sky was really this blue.

 It was a splendid time to be out in the woods.

So much to look at. So much to see.

And no one has to tell this girl to "stop and smell the roses"

- or anything else, for that matter.

We had a grand time, and I wore out before Piper did.

When we got home, I puttered around a bit but had to sort of drag myself out for evening chores.

So...no goats were combed today. 

But I believe it was the right call.

~~~~~