Birthday thoughts

Thoughts of my father are with me often. When I hear peepers or when I hear the lovely trill of the wood thrush. When I see a sunset. When I hear the strains of Moonlight Serenade or In The Mood or So Rare...the music he loved so much. When I smell freshly cut hay or hear the ca-chung ca-chung of a baler. When I see a 4-leaf clover. When I spy the Farmer's Almanac in the grocery store. When I load our wood stove. When I rake the leaves in the fall because he always used to tell me it was better to leave them on the lawn. When I plant my garden. When I smell the pungent odor of udder balm. And yes, even when I smell manure.

But today, on March 29 my thoughts are of him even more. March 29 was his birthday. A birthday he shared with his sister, my Aunt Barbara.

As a little tyke he loved his machines. He had a fondness for trains which never left him. I would often find him leafing through his train books, staring at pictures of locomotives.


Almost until the day he died at 79 he was still enjoying the thrill of riding his tractor. We still have one of his tractors. When we start it up I can can still see him bouncing around on the seat through the meadow, often hauling the manure spreader or hay rake or baler behind. That was his happy world. We all have a little spot where we are the happiest. I think that was his. And those memories are what make me smile. I am so happy that I have them. Thanks for giving me so many happy memories, Dad.

Fifty years ago........

In this weeks Lakeville Journal, in the "Turning Back The Pages" section, I came across this tiny article:

50 years ago ---- March 1959

A $10,000 fire completely destroyed the hay and cow barn on the Robert Frueh property in Falls Village at the height of Saturday afternoon's electric storm.


Fifty years ago.....I was only 12. It seems like only yesterday that I saw my father's precious barn turn into a ball of fire and heard the crackle of the flames just feet from my back as I tried to free the panic stricken cows from their stanchions. It's a sight and sound that I will never forget. To this day I can remember how the air was saturated with the smell of burning hay for days afterwards. The smell of locust wood burning has the same smell. Whenever we burn locust wood in our wood stove the odor from the smoke rising from the chimney wisks me back to a time and place that I would rather forget but never will.

A March weekend

When my father first moved to the farm he kept a brief log of the weather conditions. On March 20 in 1948 he noted that it was the coldest day since Christmas at 3 below zero. But on March 23 he heard the first peepers. Unusual after such cold. We didn't have below zero weather this weekend but I can guarantee that it was cold enough today that I won't be hearing the peepers tomorrow.

I told myself that when the thermometer reached 50 today I would head outside to do some yard work. It never got there. And I got antsy. So when it read 46.9 I pulled on my turtle neck, knee socks, wool sweater and coat and headed out. Paul played with his guy toy, the bulldozer, and I raked and raked and raked and raked some more. Didn't I just do this in the fall? I raked so much that pretty soon I was shedding my coat. I raked until I could feel the beginning of blister painage in my hands. It was the longest I have been outside in months and it felt so good to come out of hibernation.


Pretty soon my lawn was dotted with little piles of leaves, all for Paul to load onto the tractor and dump in our dumping place on Thursday. Hard work deserves a reward and I thought about my reward all day as I was working. At 5 o'clock I slipped back in the house, poured myself a little glass of sherry and curled up in my chair in the sun in the Belly Acres room with my book. A sweet reward. I'm reading "The Story of Edgar Sawtelle". VERY VERY good. I'm actually reading it rather slowly because I don't want it to end.

And now I'm going to my next reward........curling up in my bed with my book as I listen to the wind rush by my window. I can't think of a better way to end my day.

Happy Irish Day!

I don't have even one tiny green speck of Irish in me but I love St. Patrick's Day for one thing and one thing only............corned beef and cabbage. That is some good stuff.

The weather today was probably the nicest weather I have ever seen on St. Pat's day. Warm and sunny and yummy. I couldn't wait to come home from school and shed my "professional" clothes for some outdoor duds so I could take advantage of the early spring weather to do some raking. I threw some corned beef to simmer in the pot and headed outside to start raking the leaves off my flower beds. I think this is the earliest I have ever done it. I love the earlier jumping ahead of the clocks because it leaves more daylight at this time of the year to start early spring chores.

After raking I came in to a house smelling deliciously of a corned beef dinner. A call from Paul at the office asking me to help him start an IV on a dog delayed dinner for a while but it was worth the wait. The best thing about corned beef is the left-overs. I can't wait for lunch tomorrow!

As a perfect end to an Irish Day Brett sent me this link to watch of my favorite Irish coach. I haven't seen this in years. I remember that day so well.....the day when I became a true UCONN fan. I was watching the game with the rest of the family but with UCONN down by one point and with only one tiny insignificant second left to play the "rest of the family" left the room, knowing that the game was over and not in UCONN's favor. Oh ye, of little faith. I never gave up on these guys. My hysterical shouts of glee brought everyone running back downstairs and into the living room with looks of shocked disbelief on their faces. It was such a sweet victory and they missed it. NEVER GIVE UP!

One of those great weekends.

When Damon was not very old he enthusiastically (he was "enthusiastic" about everything) came to us with the news that he had discovered that his name spelled backwards was "Nomad". He took that to heart and has been a traveler ever since. He has probably logged more plane miles than peanuts. But the best trips he takes, according to us, are the plane trips east. He had a conference in Boston this week so on Saturday we drove to Kara's for a visit with our nomad.

I brought late Valentine's presents for everyone. I don't know why Sean and Kara look so surprised. I'm always late for holidays. I still have a few errant Christmas cards that haven't made it to the mailbox yet. Soon. Soon. Maybe the next snow day.

Kara fixed us a delicious leg of lamb dinner. It's been a long time since I have had one. Kara's was even better than I remember. The dinner table, as always, was our place to chat, laugh and enjoy each other.


After dinner Paul took his usual nap..........................

............while Damon, of course, connected with his iPhone appendage.



That gave me a chance to sit and enjoy my lovely first grandchild.

The visit was over far too fast. Paul and I climbed back into Paul's "race-car" (white knuckle time) and took off for home, with a stop on the way to visit my mother. By the time we got home it was late and I was too tired to cook so we went out for dinner where we were bombarded with cell phone usage....my pet peeve which I will address at another time.



Today was one of those lovely early spring days that you dream about in the midst of the cold dark winter. It was warm and sunny. I had to spend most of the day inside cleaning. By late afternoon I HAD to go outside. I did a little lawn cleanup and discovered my first sign of spring life.........my daffodils poking through the leaves.

It was a perfect weekend. It's too bad weekends only last two days.

Two good things

There are two good things about winter. One is the weather.......the snow, the sleet, the cold, the wind. I love it all. The other good thing about winter is spring. There is nothing that feels better after a long, dark and cold winter than spring. The contrast is like a lightening bold to your senses. This weekend was the first time that the lightening bolt hit. The temperatures hovered around 60, melting the snow cover and making the air smell like wet earth and mud and warm breezes. The ice covered streams and rivers are melting and after months of silence we hear the sound of rushing water. The sun is brighter and when we come out of the house we feel like groundhogs coming out of their underground home after a dark winter.

I hung the linens out on the line yesterday for the first time since November. The smell of the fresh air that lingered on the sheets and towels when I brought them in was to die for. That has to be one of my favorite smells. I can never understand why they make fabric softeners and detergents that claim to have that "fresh air smell". NO WAY! It only smells like nauseating perfume. There is no way that you can duplicate that smell in a bottle.

We saw five deer in the field tonight, foraging for a grass, as we were eating dinner on the porch. We haven't seen deer for a while. They still have their dark winter coats. We will watch these coats lighten as spring approaches.

I drove to Windsor today to visit my mother in the rehab home where she has been since her fall in January (and where she will be leaving soon, thank goodness). We scooted up and down the halls for a walk in her walker. It was so beautiful outside that I suggested we go out and just stand there and feel the spring air. The look on her face when we hit the outside was priceless. It has been so long since she has been outside on a nice day. As she stood there looking around and musing over how good it felt to be outside I thought how lucky I am to be able to do that every day. Some things we really do take for granted.

Snow means memories

It snowed today. A good snow. About 10 inches of snow. Some people were not very happy. I didn't share that sentiment. I couldn't be happier. I love snow and always have.

From the time my parents brought me home to this 200+ year old farmhouse when I was a baby snow has always been a part of my life. When I was small and a storm was coming I would sit on the sofa in the living room and press my face to the window, waiting for the first flake to fall. I still sort-of do the same thing when I hear a storm is on it's way. I spent many cold and snowy hours pushing giant snowballs across the front lawn in preparation for engineering a snowman with real coal for eyes and mouth. I slid on the hill behind the house until the sun dropped behind the mountain in a red haze. Then I scuttled into the warm kitchen where my mother was always ready with a cup of hot cocoa (made with milk, rich Guernsey milk). My father would haul wood from the woodshed behind the house to burn in our two wood burning stoves, the only source of heat in the drafty old farmhouse. At night my mother would snuggle with my sister and I, warm and drowsy from our bath, next to the warm fire as she read the next chapter of Little House in the Big Woods to us. Sometimes I could hear the snowplow rumbling down the road in the background.


As I watched Paul shovel the snow today I thought of my father doing the same thing so many years ago, but always with a regular old dirt shovel. He never owned a snow shovel. I never heard him complain of the cold or the snow. Maybe he loved it as much as I do. Could something like that be genetic?


When he was ready to make the trek to the barn in the wintertime he would pull on his "arctics"....black boots that went almost to his knee
and had metal buckles. My sister would sit in front of one leg and I in front of the other and we each would buckle up a boot, inhaling a faint smell of the barn as we leaned over and seriously tackled our task.

My mother would later pack my sister and I into our snowsuits and we would walk through snow that seemed thigh deep to the barn. No matter how cold it was outside the barn was kept warm by the steamy breath and body heat of the cows. The smell of molasses would mix with the smell of hay as my father would pour molasses on the hay to make it more appetizing for the cows. Later we would walk down the lane to "skate" on the small stream that meandered through the woods. Even at that young age I can remember looking at the pine trees covered with snow and marveling at how beautiful they were.

Do I have such a love for snow because it has always been so much a part of my life or because it brings back such sweet memories of my mother and father? Maybe a little bit of both but when I think of snow I always think of my mother and father and that makes me smile and warms me no matter how cold it is outside.