Weekly Photo Challenge: The World Through Your Eyes
This is the neighbors’ barn as viewed from our upstairs window where I have always sat to rock the girls to sleep.
In the last six years I’ve seen it in the sun, the rain, the snow, the dark, spring, fall, with cows and without.
My favorite is when it’s under a full moon with snow on the ground.
But, lacking snow, I settled for my second favorite and was able to sneak in without waking Jane to get a summer sunset shot.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Curves
These curves are a sure sign of summer!
Weekly Photo Challenge: The Sign Says
The sign says “Start your climb here!”
Can you see the path worn in the bark go up the tree, around the back and then come back around just before the first branch?
The burr oak that sports this impressive animals sign stands on my family’s farm and has always been called “the coon tree”.
The tree is awe inspiring on it’s own. A giant that stands a bit apart from the rest of the trees with bark ridges so big I can cup my hand around them.
As impressive as the tree is, it always boggles my mind a bit when I stand at the bottom and look up the track worn in the side and think how many little clawed feet, whether they were from coons or other animals, have climbed this tree. The track almost always shows signs of fresh wear (you can see not only the browner spots of fresh scratches but the black dirt that runs up the middle) and the path is deep! You can get an idea of just how deep the path is worn if you compare the difference of the height of the bark on the bottom right corner to that of the path.
What sort of animal signs have you run across this week?
Weekly Photo Challenge: In the Background
I write my “to do” list, and everything else, on a window shaped mirror in our kitchen.
It works great.
The mirror has a central location, it’s easy to change and highly visible.
The down side is that sometimes when I feel as though my list of things to do is overwhelming, I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror with the chores imposed over my face and see that it might be true.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Escape
Back in February I wrote that the line had been redrawn and that the highway construction on our road would also involve the demolition of our home.
Since then we have had, as expected, many meetings, phone calls, e-mails, appraisals and offers but we are severely lacking in the decision department. As of today, we have 88 days (not that I’m counting or anything) before the DOT buys our and house we need to start deciding.
But, weighing the options of something we never wanted to do in the first place has been hard. Do we buy, build, rent, stay local, move away? We talk ourselves in circles everyday and leave our conversations with a vague feeling of nausea but no closer to a real decision.
Today, after a morning of looking at properties and an afternoon of feeling ill when faced with the options and decisions before us John called me from work and told me we needed to think positive. Then he told me a very long paragraph worth of stuff that he is going to remember when he gets frustrated. It was all nice, happy stuff and I’m sure it will do wonders for him.
As for me, I had spent the afternoon cleaning up cheesy, toddler puke. My attention span is short and I’m much better at, as John would say, “mustering the hate” than thinking up long, flowery, positive statements. I needed something a bit more concise and it didn’t take me long to come up with a nice, short, memorable phrase of my own.
No matter what, we are escaping the road, life will be good.
Not only is the road the source of our current trouble but ever since the first Monday we lived here and the shock I had when the first semi’s started flying by I have hated it. I have hated the cars, the trucks, and the semi’s. I have hated the man with the barking dog that used to go by every day at 3:30, the way we live in the country yet are always on display, the heart stopping feeling of seeing any of our animals out on the road, and the fear that the semi behind us isn’t going to stop and wait as we turn into the driveway- again. I have been mustering the hate for the road for a long time.
So, when I am next faced with the overwhelming decisions before us I believe that I will have no trouble remembering…
No matter what, we are escaping the road, life will be good.
Then John called back and told me a confusing story about a 50$ bills in a urinal and how he should buy me a goat to make the move easier.
Yeah, I didn’t get it either.
But, I’ve always wanted goats and so I’m not questioning it. I just told him a goat always needs a friend and changed my phrase a bit…
No matter what, we are escaping the road and getting goats, life will be great.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Pattern
The sunlight shining through this young maple leaf highlighted the pattern of it’s veins in bright green.
Weekly Photo Challenge: From Above
Because it’s the little things that make life great and because it’s the little things I forget, here are a few little things I’d like to remember from today:
Jane: (16 months, pictured above) Told me “Thank You” after I changed her dirty diaper.
Clara: (3 years) Ran out the front door, fell down the two steps off the porch into the front garden, rolled to her feet and came up smiling and waving at the neighbor who was driving by on his tractor.
Ivy: (6 years) Came home from school with a math homework sheet she had made for me to work on because it would be “good practice for my brain” and then I could be as smart as her.
It’s very impressive when your husband tells you that he has to do the jumping portion of his workout outside because the eight foot ceilings are too short.
But, when he phrases it this way –
“I hit my head on the ceiling so hard I knocked myself on my ass.”
It’s difficult to show the proper amount of appreciation for his athleticism through the tears of laughter.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Change
Some years spring suddenly changes the land from the grey of winter to a burst of greenery and color. But this year, as spring slowly creeps it’s way forward, the survey markers for the new right of way are the most flamboyant reminder of change in our yard.
The road that you can see through the willows is due for improvements and our house, along with the willow fence, is in the new right of way.
Change is a commin’!
(For more of the depressing details you can read A Line Drawn)
It was a morning full of April showers but by afternoon the sun had come out and only a few rain drops were left hiding inside the tulip leaves.
Behind the Willows 