A Break From Winter

Sometime back, I started putting what goes on around my country home on Facebook. I wrote a blog post about wild animals trying to make their homes under my front porch. Usually what I write about is probably no big deal to other country dwellers. I know others have their share of stories about wild critter invasions. Maybe it was my approach to the problems that interested others.

There are events that can be used in most of my stories if I take the time to realize it. Since I write stories about an Amish family living on a farm, it was easy to give the woman of the house the same problems with the skunks. The children had a pet raccoon for a while. Events that really happened makes my fiction seem more natural and real. The latest assault on the porch has been by the barn cats. When the barn was cold, the warmest place outside is our front porch with the sun beaming down to heat the boards. So I guess if I thought like a cat I’d say it would be natural cat thinking to turn the porch post into a scratching board. I tried sanding the splinters off and ignoring the problem. That didn’t change the cats habits so I sprayed the post with a hot pepper and water spray. That treatment doesn’t last long. My next idea was to wrap the post with a large garbage sack. The cat most offended by my actions was a black and white tom. I watched while he sniffed at the sack, touched it with his paw only to have the sack move. His irritation got the better of him, and he bit the sack. That’s when I opened the door and told him to go to the barn. The cats still come often to sit on the two park benches. I had hopes that they would forget about the post this spring so that I could take the plastic sack away. Today I found some tears in the sack. My guess is the black and white cat is getting used to the post. One of the days, he’s going to take that sack off for me, only it will be in pieces. The miniature wolf in the picture is a motion detector, but he wasn’t scary enough either.[image error]

One Facebook post was about the porcelain hand I found in the garden. Like many others, we live in an old farm house with outbuildings where once a family had an active farm. Other old outbuildings that were past repair and maybe treasures the buildings held were bulldozed and buried underground. So now years later, we till up a garden space each spring and fall. Whatever pieces of objects come to the surface wind up in plain sight. That’s how I found a rare coin and the porcelain hand. Most of the time it’s small pieces of old glass or crock bowls that might be a problem if I stepped on them barefoot. My imagination worked over time when I found the hand. What girl played with that doll? What did the rest of the doll look like? You never know. I might come up with a story some day.

[image error]Today, I’m enjoying the warm weather. It is too good to be true and not going to last much longer. By next weekend, we’re going to be wearing coats again. I usually reserve my walks by all the flower beds for late March and early April to see what bulbs are coming up. This morning, I checked out one flower bed and found resurrection lilies and mums are up. They are going to turn black as soon as it freezes again. Hopefully, that doesn’t stop the resurrection lilies from rising again. I noticed the large buds on the cherry tree, one of the first fruit trees to bloom in the spring. Sap is already running in trees, and usually that means we will lose some of the fruit trees or have less fruit.

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Whatever happens, I still think days like this one makes the rest of winter seems so much shorter. I even did my wash this morning and hung it on the clothesline. Never have I hung clothes out in February and without a coat on. I know others years ago hung clothes out all winter long and let them freeze dry. I have been spoiled by a modern appliance called a dryer.

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I thought for a moment I picked the wrong day to hang my wash out when I saw the farmer was burning the road ditches to get rid of the dead grass and weeds, but I lucked out. The wind was blowing the smoke away from my clothes.

Certain things make where I live seem like country. One of those things is being able to hear the crowing of a rooster running with his hens in the yard. The chickens are able to be outside. We’ve always have to wait for the snow to melt before we turn them loose. That usually doesn’t happen for another month yet, but not this winter. Of course, the roosters crow in the hen house, but the sound is muffled, not nice and loud like today. The chickens are free, and the roosters are crowing how glad they are to be able to scatter out. I know how the chickens feel. Today makes me feel like crowing, too.

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