Lookin' Good!

Woke up yesterday to a cool morning...we've been given a welcome respite from the heat.  Shortly after the sun was well and truly up, there was the sound of a tractor in my drive and there was Joel (tires intact).  If one needed a definition of "good neighbors," one would look no further than Joel and Judy.

Joel clanked along disking through the star thistle in the south field and I went on about my chores.  Poppy sure looks good with her summer "do."  Running my hand over her newly shorn wool, there is so much lanolin that she feels almost damp.  The high-water mark on her fleece from the winter's muck had ruined it for spinning.  I could have done, but it would have taken so much washing to get it ready I felt it wasn't worth the trouble.

Construction on the barn swallows' condos goes on apace.  Those little birds are Master masons, starting with a base on the back wall, then slowly building up layer upon layer of daubs of mud mixed with grasses (like adobe) in a convex pattern.  Only so much is laid down each day and let to dry.  How do they know how large to build so that the nest will accommodate eggs and mama?  How do they know how to construct a complicated rounded form with mud, of all things?  Is it their spit that makes the mud sticky enough to stay on the rafter?

It has long been my opinion that God and good neighbors should help those who help themselves, so late in the afternoon I jumped on my little tractor and mowed down the west field.  The star thistle hasn't yet set flowers and it's the perfect time to try to stay ahead of their painful thorns.  Bouncing along in the slanting rays of the setting sun, goats and sheep chewing cud in the next pen over, watching the circle of unmown weeds get smaller and smaller, cutting down the weeds in the driveway next to the well-turned earth of the south pasture....

After the job was done and the tractor was put away, I sat with Bess and the cats on the porch with a glass of sippin' whiskey and watched the last of the sunset before the kids' bedtime, smelled mown grass and fresh earth, and looked out over the cleaned yards of Farview.  Dang, we're lookin' good!