Up To Here

I've about had my fill of this weather.  Down in the goat barn, the wind roars like a freight train headed right for us.  The girls are cranky and have started pulling hair again.  Poor Ruthie seems to be the primary target and has several bald patches.  Stumpy is spending her second day in isolation in the laundry room.  A pair of bedraggled pedestrian turkeys just passed by on their way to scrounge breakfast.  Last night, a sodden group of free-range chickens followed me to the hen house, squelching through the muck to get in out of the downpour.  The cats cry to be let out, I open the door, they take one look and say, "Oh hell no!,"  and decide to use the indoor facilities.  Bessie Anne spends the day in front of the woodstove, her paws and lips moving as she dreams of running in the pasture.  I make soup and work on projects, but I'm mad to get outside again.

Just after Steve died, the small leak in the roof that he'd been meaning to patch someday became an honest-to-God hole and a portion of the ceiling in the breakfast room fell down, necessitating a new roof...not someday...now!  And it was raining.  I heaped blessings and pushed hot coffee on the crew that saved me.  As they were packing up when they were done, the foreman told me he'd had the feeling of being watched while they worked.  I explained that, being on top of the hill, no one could have been watching.  Then he pointed at the man in my tree, and we laughed.  My "man" is very subtle in dry weather, but becomes more readily apparent in the rain.  I like the thought that he is watching over me, too.