At Home

This is our sweet tom cat. His name is The Tom Cat. His mother raised him on her own in our Quonset. As a child he was always curious about the family of tame cats that lived on our porch. Every day he and would sneak up to see what they ate and how the other kittens jumped into our laps and purred as we stroked them. He saw them happy and carefree and he smelled the cat food that he never had the courage to come and eat.

Well, he fell in love with a sweet calico porch cat. They are best friends. Eventually they had kittens. He is so nurturing to them. He's unlike any male cat I've ever seen. In this picture hes a little rough because he has had to defend his family from a prowling competitor.

This is interesting thing about him to me. He only eats a certain brand of cat food and only in a tin can. He gets really offended if he is offered raw meat. And he won't eat anything that has spilled, or our leftovers. The other cats love raw meat over cat food and even if they are not hungry they will eat whatever we put out because our food tastes good. I think there is an association in his mind with raw meat and his childhood, which he wants to put behind him. I think he idealized what he didn't have as a child and is living the dream. He is a Tin Can Eating Cat and the father of a loving close-knit family.




And this is my Mom in her happy place. She had a rough day teaching grade three and needed to dig in the soil for a couple of hours.

In the winter when she can't garden she will put in a Jane Austen movie that she knows by heart and sew me or my sisters beautiful clothes. She also bakes pies and cookies and other treats. Last night she dreamed she opened up her own store called Judy's Beautiful Pies in Taber. Why not? then she wouldn't ever have to deal with those little grade three-ers.

This is the vegetable garden which feeds us all year round. Behind that is the pond where we get all our water.








These are our hunting dogs.

This is Chief. One day my Mom wanted a horse and she met up with a guy who wanted his old Morgan horse to go to a good home. So he gave Chief to us and got an apple pie in return.

So that's life at the farm. Come over anytime. We can sit on the trampoline and eat a piece of Mom's homemade pie!

Lovely Day Today

My roommate is making our back porch into Paradise. I'm awed by what she can accomplish. What you see here is only a piece of what all four sides are like. There's also a porch swing and a fountain. I used to think that I could watch someone work all day, but she wears me out! She tells me she loves it, though. Yesterday I helped her by having my nap outside on the swing where she was working. I think she appreciated it. When more energetic workers showed up I gave up my spot. We all pitch in here.
Will was right though, everything is turning green and growing fast. I began mowing the lawn this evening but stopped when my roommate came out and begged me to let her do it. That always happens to me when I start mowing! I get five minutes into it and someone else takes over. My Dad explained that its because the whole point of mowing a lawn is to make it look nice. I tell him I can get it looking nice if he'd just give me a few more tries to fix the gashes and misses and squiggly lines. Well, I never could. I thought that maybe now that I'm a for real grown up since my last birthday that lawn mowing abilities would now be within reach. I guess you never know until you try.
I think I'll have an artistic rock lawn display instead of grass, or maybe a soft and springy thyme ground cover. Thyme loves to be walked on and delivers a delicious smell with every step you take. Or what lawn ideas do you have?

Maybe I Was Too Hasty...

Sometimes I do that. Over-do. Like in the previous post, last comment. The rain though -I was wet through for two days straight. All my clothes were damp. My fingers were getting white and wrinkled. I really was unsettled by the end of the second day. But now I feel silly. The sun is back and the sky is blue and clearer and cleaner than I've ever seen it and the dark moist earth is sending up the most delicious smells of pine and moss and wood. Anyway, don't worry about me, I'm fine. Its just that nobody warned me that rain like that could happen. Something that won't go away though is how Will said this rain was soft and gentle - to me it was a never ending stormy torrent. So - what kind of rain experiences still await? Guys?

Misty

Yesterday evening my friends and I went to the Edmonton temple and when we were walking out the air was warm and wet and the sky had a thick grey comforter of clouds. We were feeling warm and good, and our hair was dripping more water than fell from the sky. We came home and listened to music and shared good food, talking only slightly as we watched the rain dribble over the chairs and table outside in the growing dark. This morning was just as wet and the traffic outside seems to move more relaxed in this slow rain. I think the drivers are all in recalling happy times. Do you love this kind of rainy day?

The Sun Won!

I learned a duet yesterday and thought maybe I should blog about the accomplishment since that means I've doubled my piano playing ability. Then I remembered how I had been reading aloud to Sharon from Northanger Abbey. And there was barely a sentence in it that I didn't have to guess about how to say it and what it really meant. " When the hour of departure drew near, the maternal anxiety of Mrs. Morland will naturally be supposed to be most severe. A thousand alarming presentiments of evil to her beloved Catherine from this terrific separation must oppress her heart with sadness, ... cautions against the violence of such noblemen and baronets as delight in forcing young ladies away to some remote farm-house, must, at such a moment relieve the fullness of her heart. Who would not think so? But Mrs. Morland knew so little of lords and baronets, that she entertained no notion of their general mischievousness, and was wholly unsuspicious of danger to her daughter from their machinations." (p.5, 6) How exciting! Well, Sharon and I decided there was a reason Northanger Abbey was not a celebrated Jane Austin favorite. Not like Clueless which was originally titled Emma. No, I will not write about those things, because more important than all that was that for the first time in almost a year, I went outside and was warm.
Warm! The sun came out and made the earth hospitable once again! I am cured from all that ails me. Nothing else matters except where I should go to drink up its rays - where I will be a little out of it rays but near enough to remember what warm weather is. That is my wish for you. May you be warm and may it make you unaccountably happy.

Furthermore,

i carry your heart with me

i carry your heart with me
(i carry it in my heart)
i am never without it
(anywhere i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet)
i want no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;
which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart
(i carry it in my heart)
ee cummings

I miss you!

Since I left thee yester eve

I do love thee, Love believe,

Twelve times dearer

Twelve hours longer

One dream deeper

One night stronger

One sun surer

Thus much more

Than I loved thee, Love, before.

- Edward Robert Bulwor -Lytton