Day: March 21, 2013

I’m learning that beauty is everywhere if you can see it. Most days, I walk on McMillan Road with Red. I think about my writing, what I am going to say. I organize chapters and ideas. The walk is important to me, it’s a quiet road and Red is an easy companion. I look around for things to photograph, and the other day, I saw this beautiful bark on these very old trees. The trees reminded me old sheep, they had so much character and presence and I could not quite figure out how to photograph them. So today I brought my 100 mm macro lens and tried capturing the feel of these beautiful old trees. Photography is a great gift to me.

The chickens came out despite all of the snow, but they quickly retreated to the woodshed, where the mid-day sun warmed them and framed them on the woodpile. There is something graceful about chickens in repose, a ballet. They are getting used to me and my camera.

Greg Burch has been a lumberjack for more than 20 years, and he is tough and strong and businesslike. If you need firewood you can call Greg at any time of day or night and he will find some for you.  It is always good, seasoned wood. In a couple of weeks, he is bringing five cords of wood for the farm, so we can season it and have it ready for next winter. Today he brought one truck load, as we are getting low. Greg is very businesslike, a pleasure to deal with for years,  but I have never seen him smile as much as he did when he introduced  me to JD, his riding dog for more than seven years.

JD is a pug and has the great and expressive face of that breed. I thought this tough lumberjack was going to melt right in front of me when I asked to photograph JD, Greg was a proud and happy poppa. You see this all the time in the country, tough men with dogs they love. I remember the Harvard study I read that found that women love dogs because they connect to them emotionally and men love dogs because they don’t talk.

Greg spends a lot of time riding around in trucks. JD is always with him.

I went to water the seeds in my plastic seed starter kit by the living room window and was delight to see that I am a garden papa. I am not a gardener by nature, or at least I wasn’t, but it was beautiful to see this first seed sprout – Maria thinks it might be a zinnia, just popping out of the dirt. About a dozen seeds had sprouted and we are filling two more. As soon as Spring hits, we are tilling the soil around the house. It is a beautiful thing, always, to see life sprout. A garden seed coming to life is not considered news in the other world, will not make it to any newscast, will not be debated by pundits or celebrated on the floor of Congress.

But it is big news, a testament to rebirth and renewal, to the cycles of life. I love my garden already, and it isn’t even here yet. But I guess it is.

I used to think chickens were dumb, and I would call them stupid. Some good chicken people corrected me, and I understand that it was one of those  reflexive things you write when you don’t think about what you are writing. Chickens are very smart about the things they need to be smart about, and this morning, I was there when one of the hens jumped out onto the rung of the coop and looked out at the world. She saw a lot of snow, and sat there musing a bit before returning to the roost. She was quite regal, even imperious about it all and she was happy to pose for me.