What I Hear

What I didn't hear was the storm that blew through the night before.  It was the topic of conversation yesterday.  I could tell from the drifts of hail/snow that the wind had to have blown it sideways up under the covered part of the deck and then switched directions and blew it up onto the porch.  There was enough of the white stuff that it took hours of sunshine to melt off.  I'd slept through all of that, and only heard the owls.

Down in the barn, all the stalls have half walls with square, hog-panel wiring above to keep the goats from jumping out.  The barn birds are out in full force now and there will be forty or fifty sitting on the wires, twittering at the top of their lungs as they wait for me to put down the nighttime treats.  At one point in time my Aunt Hilda became interested in birds and built large, walk-in aviaries for canaries, budgerigars (parakeets), cockatiels, and cockatoos.  Papa, my grandfather, kept one favorite cockatiel in the house.  The bird's name was Joe, and he could say, "Hi, Joe, whaddya know?"  (That was considered high humor back in the day.)  Listening to the birds in the barn, it makes me think of Aunt Hilda's aviaries.  These little guys have lost their fear of me and come hopping around my feet to pick up grain that the goat on the stand might have dropped, and I can occasionally hear a really brave one rustling around in the open feed bucket.

Weather permitting, when I'm done with morning chores I take Bess and a book and we sit out on the deck for awhile.  When I was a Kid, I went for two weeks (not quite two weeks, but that's another story for another day) to a Girl Scout camp aptly called Singing Pines.  When the wind blows here, it may whistle though the bare branches of the oaks by the house or rustle the leaves, but it does sing and sigh through the pines down by the road.  The pines were singing yesterday.

There were a couple of hiccups in the power yesterday morning, just enough to require me to reset the clocks.  While cooking an early dinner last night, the power went out completely.  I was just happy I was using the stove top and not the electric oven or microwave.  I started planning for full dark when I got back from the barn, and it was a tremendous relief just at sundown when I heard the clicks and hums that signal that the electricity is back on.

I like what I hear.