The Second Podcast

I'm happy to offer my second podcast, this one on animal grieving, inspired by yesterdays' blogpost on the memorial service for Leo, my friend's beloved Lab/Mix who dies in his sleep at age 12. Many people wrote me and asked me to talk about this subject more. I think the podcast is a good forum for an occasional discussion of grieving, I wrote about my life with dogs as a "river of joy," and expressed a desire not to turn that joy into misery and lament. I've been writing about this subject for years, from "New Work Of Dogs" to "Going Home: Finding Peace When Pets Die." We love animals more and more and need them more and more and so their death becomes more important to us. I appreciate the exchange of ideas and hope to draw from your comments and ideas for the podcasts. Next week I'll be podcasting about life on the farm, on a lighter note, I think I'll do it on Simon and the donkeys. Then one on Flo, the barn cat.

There is a podcast box at the top of the Farm Journal page and you can subscribe to my podcasts there. Here's the second podcast.

2013-16-05Episode2-Grieving

Last Light

Every afternoon, around 6 o'clock, the sun drops down across the hill in front of the farmhouse, shining straight into my study window and when I think of it, I put a dahlia or a geranium in front of the window, and the bright light illuminates the curtain and it looks sometimes to me like a stained glass window, it is a quiet and simple beauty. It signals the end of the day for me.

Magnolia

We got a magnolia tree Sunday and planted it in front of the farmhouse, part of our garden riot and reclamation project. I was not familiar with the proud Magnolia, I am dazzled by its blooms. I sat on the porch and watched the sun set with Red and Lenore – Maria is off at yoga – and I saw the sun light up the blossoms. I'm going to like this tree.

Afternoon Chores

Our days are framed by chores, bounded by them. Morning chores are right after sun-up or 7 a.m., whichever comes first. Animals eat first. Animals to be fed:

First, the barn cats, Minnie and Flo, fed some dry food by the back door, or in the barn, depending on weather and where they are. They need fresh water.

Then, the donkeys get one third of a bale of second cut hay, taken from bales stored in the barn.

Then, the sheep get one-third of a bale.

The hose is pulled out to fill the water buckets.

The coop is opened, the chickens given some feed.

The manure is swept out of the barn, shoveled out into the field.

The barn is swept out. Often, the buckets are dirty, filled with hay and dirt, and need to be rinsed out.

Then, the gates are checked and double-check,  the dogs are let in from the yard (Red is with us doing the chores, he keeps the sheep in place and in line. The dogs are fed. We take a few minutes and scan the animals to check for limps or wounds or aberrant behavior.

Then, Maria and I go back into the house. I scan e-mail to see if there is anything I have to attend to, I cannot scan all of it. I have breakfast, sit and talk, usually meditate together. Then Maria goes to her studio, I go to my office. I blog and work on my books all morning and through the early afternoon. I take photos intermittently throughout the day. My camera is always with me. We have lunch together if we can. I cook and shop.

Then, afternoon chores at 3, eggs are collected if there are any and all of the animals have to be fed and watered again. Chores take about 30 minutes in the winter, less now. Soon the animals will not need hay. We have added garden chores to the mix. Maria and I split the chores up wordlessly, we just each start and the other picks up with the rest. These chores are dynamic and inflexible. They cannot be put off, they embody commitment and focus. Dependent animals are always a responsibility that does not end.

Dr. Harvey Coco, Dawn Delisle

Like most people, I do not have good memories of my dentist. I'm sure Dr. Brown was quite the nice man, but I remember him as a  nightmare, a bogeyman, a sadist, sticking gas masks on me and using one of those medieval bone-rattling drills to torture and frighten me. His needles always seemed a foot long to me, and I don't recall him asking if it hurt. It always hurt, and I didn't sleep for days in advance of my appointments. For years, even the mention of dentistry gave me the sweats. But life is a circle, a wheel that turns.  My dentist is located in the small and struggling town of Granville, New York, right by the Vermont border. The Granville Family Dentistry continually surprises me.

"I see you are no stranger to dentistry," was the first thing Dr. Harvey Coco ever said to me." His assistant Dawn Delisle laughed. Dr. Coco loves irony, you can see it in his eyes. He does not take himself, the world too seriously, except when he is drilling or poking around Then, he is very quiet.

I think of Granville Family Dentistry as a place that could only exist in the country, and nothing about the town Granville is especially modern.  A once booming Slate mining area, Granville is one of those beautiful upstate New York towns that the world has left behind. Yet the dental facility is a spotless and strikingly modern facility which reflects the ethos of nearby Vermont  – it runs on solar power, there are giant panels outside and the computerized x-ray and records system is  right out of Star Wars.

It is a high-tech place, yet not.  Here, technology has not overwhelmed  humanity. It has none of the impersonal coldness of medical facilities, it could well be set in the 1950′s. The staff seems cheerful and engaged – everyone who works there gets to pick the music for morning and afternoon rotations. It is clean and manages to be as close to painless as dentistry can get. I am spending some considerable time there lately – decaying cavities, a crown, and now, a root canal scheduled for Monday. Dr. Brown continues to haunt me across age and time.

The oddest thing is that I look forward to going (mostly), and generally have a great time when I get there. Dr. Coco and Dawn and I make a lot of noise. We trade stories, laugh, compare notes on the absurdities of life,  and I appreciate the small things that add up to big things.

The whole place exudes competence, but I am especially lucky to be in the care of Dr.  Coco and Dawn. These two exude the values of another time. They have been working together for years, and I am always touched by how Dr. Coco sees Dawn as a partner, the two of them working in sync, with respect and affection. Doctors have a reputation for arrogance, Dr. Coco is anything but. He sets a gone that is comfortable and reassuring and Dawn contributes, observes and truly assists.

Generally, Dr. Coco and Dawn don't even need to speak with one another, each is always ahead of the other. That adds to the comfort level, the confidence and chemistry of these two. Both are rabid football fans (I am not) and once provoked, there is a blizzard of statistics, predictions, arguments, analysis,  recaps and gossip. I don't know exactly what they do, but even root canals hardly hurt, and I am shocked to leave smiling. Like most sports fans, they are both usually outraged about one thing or another – they are both rabid New England Patriots Fans – and I love hearing the recaps, even if I generally don't know what they are talking about. When you are strapped into a dentist's chair, it doesn't really matter, you don't have to try and grunt and mumble an opinion.

Dr. Coco and Dawn have a great sense of humor, and they inspire me to get some of my own stories out there, once there is a break in the NFL chatter (they both know a LOT about football). Sometimes the laughter in our room is so l loud the office staff says you can hear it all the way down the hall. Sometimes, I give as good as I get, I love to tell stories too but rarely in a doctor's office. Dr. Coco tells funny stories of parenting, Dawn has resisted computers and social media. They love working together, an odd but compatible couple.

I called Maria up this morning and said "I need a root canal, but it will be fine. I love going to the dentist, isn't that strange?" Even she has no idea how strange it is for me. Health care is complex for everyone in our world, and for most people, it is a tense and unnerving process, forbidding and uncomfortable. One day in Granville I was sitting in the waiting room and another patient and I were aghast at the explicit gum disease video running on the tube. We each mentioned it – who wants to wait to see the dentist watching that? -  and it was gone the next day.

Dr. Coco and Dawn Delisle are a fine medical team, but what is important about them – and perhaps this is a rural life thing – is that they remember to be human, and that their patients are human. In this way, they have spanned the sometimes yawning chasm between humanity and good health care.

They are taking good care of my big mouth, but they are also making the bogeyman go away. I thought he would be with me to the end.

Imagining Mercy And Compassion

Like everyone else, I am ready to leave the Boston Marathon bombings behind, return to my world, keep my feet on the ground, but a part of this awful thing isn't quite ready to leave me. All week I was thinking of those many people killed, injured, frightened and traumatized by this monstrous butchery – I made sure to contribute to the funds raised for their insurance and care.Today, working in the garden, I thought of the face of this 19-year-old boy and the Army of trucks, teams, helicopters, trucks and  soldiers and police officers he summoned out of  his madness to gather and fight him and hunt him down.

I felt for the young officer gunned down in his patrol car, and grateful for the men who rushed into bullets and bombs to protect their communities. I hope I will have such courage if the time ever comes. There was much compassion for them, as there should have been.

But I felt for this man today, this suspect, this seemingly normal boy, but still, it seemed a boy,  not too much more than a child who caused so much horror and provoked such a fearsome response. He is responsible for what he has done, and will, I am certain, be held accountable.

I was uneasy at the images  of the streams of men with their big black guns in their trucks and armor and helmets – there were  thousands of them, it seemed an image out of Orwell or some Dystopian film fantasy, not an American city. There seem to be more and more of them all the time, with newer and more powerful technologies, searches, cards, regulations, tools. I thought of this young and wasted life, whose soul was somehow so emptied of what it means to have a conscience or spirit.

I often fear that the awful damage these damaged humans do only begins with the dead and injured, but spirals and mushrooms into what it turns the rest of us into, a society that is increasingly armed, self-righteous, divided, fearful and angry. How ironic that it takes mass murderers to unite us and our only real heroes are the men in guns and trucks, heroic as they often are.

I watched some of the social media today – it seems a Frankenstein creation, bigger and more out of control all the time – including many of my "friends" on Facebook and saw this man called a monster, a fiend, inhuman, an animal, a devil. Everyone seems to want him dead, and as quickly as possible. In our culture, of course, he cannot ever die, he will be portrayed, visualized, examined and transformed into an iconic kind of hero from hell, a symbol of how in our culture one person can turn all of the rest of us upside down. He will live on in blogs, websites, videos, social media and the digital archive forever. His face will never go away, even as he withers alone in a cell in some super-prison, his only companions other fiends and monsters and mass murderers.

And I wonder what it is about our world that turns young men into creatures capable of unimaginable violence and brutality, more all the time. I don't see too many stories about that in all of the cries for vengeance and more security.

I am not a Christian, but I am an admirer of Jesus Christ  and I am always struck by how evoked and exploited he is but so little understood. He would have thought of this young man, I am sure, not as subhuman but as all too human, perhaps all the more deserving of mercy and compassion because of that. This young man has sentenced himself to Hell, he will never go free in this world, never have love and connection, he will listen to his own voice for the rest of his days,  he almost surely will wish he had died in that boat. I thought of the farmer who left Simon to die in his awful pen, and wondered why no one felt any mercy and compassion for him, only for the animal he neglected and starved.

Mercy and compassion does not mean forgiveness. There are no excuses for Boston last Monday.  Compassion is for us, it helps us. It means saving ourselves from being less human. It means understanding, and it calls for us to spare ourselves the corrosive nature of anger and vengeance. Is mercy and compassion, I wondered, only reserved for the good, for the innocent, for those we like and understand? For the law abiding? Or is true mercy and compassion for the other, the despised and reviled, those whose brutality is beyond our imagination? We are quick to seek vengeance, but it doesn't seem to work all on its own.

As I move away from this week, I am getting clearer about my own feelings. I see the way forward for myself. It is okay for me to feel badly about this man and his life. I will permit myself to feel  compassion for his awful choices, his awful fate, for another young life cut so short. It is liberating for me. I cannot suggest that course for anyone else, nor can I imagine how I would feel if my child was killed that day, or my legs blown off on a beautiful Spring day.

But I hope I don't end up living in one of those countries that becomes less human and more brutal every time something inhuman is done to it, that slowly evolves into the very things it hates without ever quite realizing it. If the dead and maimed are sad and deserving of mercy, and they surely are, so is this sorry man. If I can't forgive what he did, perhaps I can try and understand him as a fellow human being. He cannot be inhuman, he is a human.

Joy For The Tillerman

The Tillerman is sore and happy. We dug four new gardens at our farm, one on either side of the front door, one by the side of the house where the chickens and cats sun themselves, one over by the pasture fence where Florence planted some flowers of her own. That one is for her. I thought running the tiller would be easy, it was not. It bucked, stalled, gripped and slid all day, much like wrestling a small horse. Every part of me is sore, I am one giant ache. We went to Momma's because I was way too tired to make a pizza and Maria is getting a fire going in the living room.

It was a great day. Ignoring much advice and many warnings, we picked a rainy, windy, cloudy day. We planted wildflowers, daffodils, we transplanted Florence's daffodils and peonies, and I took a half dozen packets of seeds and dug small ditches for them and covered them up. The chickens will love them if they find them, scratching the dirt. The chickens will also eat beetles and other things that bother flowers.  Nature takes its own course.

Tomorrow, we will set out in search of some perennials. My attitude about gardens irritates Maria a bit, she is more patient than I am, more nurturing and can wait. I have become a warrior for color, an addict, photography has done this to me and I want flowers now, or if not tomorrow then at the earliest possible time. Things are looking up. I love my gardens and took a vow today to water and weed them faithfully, and to photography the hell out of them.

Hens In The Wind

I admire certain things about animals. They don't squawk about the weather, and they don't need weather alerts or names for storms. They accept the weather as a natural part of life, and today when the wind hit 50 mph gusts, the hens dug themselves into a small dip in the grass, closed their eyes and offered warmth and support for one another. This seemed a metaphor for me, another thing I learn from the animals I live with.

Bedlam Farm On My Mind

I woke up early this morning dreaming of Bedlam Farm, this other presence, other existence in our lives. We are quite settled in our new home, but of course we won't be fully there until Bedlam Farm is sold. It has been almost 14 months since Bedlam Farm went on the market, and the experience has been humbling and fascinating. Everyone we knew – me too – believed Bedlam Farm would sell in a minute, there are so many people who read books about it, seemed to love it and the idea of it, so many people who came by to paint, love the view, admire the beautiful old farmhouse, the restored barns, the path in the woods, the meadows and hills.

One of your fans will buy it, there are so few beautiful barns left, it is such a perfect place for so many things. People will gobble it up. I always knew better. The whole idea of celebrity is overblown in our culture, unless you are a movie star, and writers are not movie stars. I saw where the economy was going, what it was doing to the real estate market up here. I always thought it would sell soon, in the Spring of 2013. We went through the phase of building altars, doing Feng Shui, hiding St. Joseph in the garden, all the things people do. But Bedlam Farm is not for everybody, there are not scores of people who want it, it would take just the right person at just the right time in their lives. It almost happened a couple of times. Bedlam Farm has always been a teacher to me, and it is still teaching me things. We are painting the outside in a couple of weeks, touching things up here and there.  We have lowered the price as far as we can. We have been successful in lowering the taxes on the farm and high-speed Internet is coming shortly. These are all good and new things to offer, things people asked about. We shall see.

In the last year, I struggled against the impulse to dislike the pushy, demanding people, and I worked to understand the very good people who wanted to change their lives but are understandably afraid. I saw lots of different people. Some just wanted a look at the place. Others wanted split-levels with central air, and heated garages. I learned not to be there when they came to look, it's just too emotional for me. I learned to leave it to the  realtors. It is a wonderful place, someone will come soon to love it.

And we will find out soon enough if my instincts were correct about this Spring. I feel it strongly, that this is the time. The farm is now teaching me patience, humility and faith. To take responsibility for my life. To face the reality of it.  Big lessons, important ones. And strength. Owning two farms has been a trial in a lot of ways, a gift in a lot of other ways. I am learning to accept my life, it has its own reasons and rhythms. I am its servant, I will adapt. It has brought me far, it will take me farther.

Well Lived
Life

I do not see myself as old, but getting older. In our culture, older people are not seen as sources of wisdom and guidance, but mostly as entitlement and health care issues and drains, aging being mostly about long-term insurance  problems and payments. Everywhere I go, every time I turn on the radio, I hear breathless programs about Medicaid, Medicare and the money it takes to grow old and die. Concerns about parenting, caretaking, medical technologies that prolong life but do not always improve it, insurance programs and premiums.

Yet I am finding something of a different path, and I hope to keep on it. The wonder of getting older is that you do learn things, you do know things, you do see things. You have made so many mistakes, gotten so many lessons, tried so many different things. I never offer my advice or experience to people, but I find that more and more, younger people find me, and sometimes I can help them – the true meaning of aging, even in our warped, anxious and greedy culture. Aging for me is not about being cared for or living forever, it is about entering a dignified, peaceful and meaningful time of life. I know things, I have a humor and perspective about the world now, I can offer something, be of real value beyond being cared for.

A young man I know told me he was suffocating in an awful job, his spirits and dreams being crushed daily. Could he change? Could he adapt? I am  young, he said, I it's hard for people my age to change in an increasingly complicated world, and I am not an exception. Do I dare to change? I want to start my own business, work for myself. I have the money to try it, but it's all I have and we will have to sacrifice for a good while..

I do not give advice easily. Smart people don't need it, fools don't take it. I told him he had to make his own decisions about life, I couldn't make them for him. All I could say was that he ought not give his life away to the limitations and expectations of other people. Life is always filled with struggle and change, no matter what kind of job you have or who you work for. Life is complicated and the more complicated it gets, the more money they make. I have learned much from the world's greatest educational system – life.

This man – he had done some work for me at Bedlam Farm – had asked me what a well-lived life is, and I said it was a life of self-determination. Of love and connection, dignity and freedom. Of courage, sometimes, it is never easy to buck the great system of fear that would dominate each phase of our lives – you need warnings to survive global warming and economic and environmental deprivation, you need health care, you need long-term health insurance, programs for disability, tests and pills for blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar, allergies, IRA's to get you through the ravages of aging in America, computers and cell phones, antibiotics every time a tick bites you, warnings when it storms. It takes a lot of strength and purpose to wade through all of that and find your own spark and light in life.

All I could tell this man was to follow his own spark, his own light, before the world and its many greedy and fearful systems snuffs it out. It is a kind of death, I said, to turn your life over to the fears of others.

A few months after I talked with him, he e-mailed me to tell me he quit his job and took his savings and started his own business as a landscape designer. It is rough going, he said, but inch by inch, he is getting there. He will make it, he said. He has two trucks and three employees. He loves every day of his hard work.  He thanked me, he said, no one had encouraged him to do what he wanted. I am glad, I said, that it was me. Small miracles, I thought, for him and for me. I am teaching a writing workshop. I tutor people to start blogs and find their voices. I am good at it. I teach encouragement.

I think this man is getting to live a well-lived life. His wife and children will benefit from living with a happy and independent man. I am learning what getting older can really mean.

Lenore's Couch: Smile

Lenore has the gift of making people smile. When people see her and look at her, the world seems to soften. She is, like many wonderful dogs, all about love, there is nothing much else to her, but food, but love is the most powerful thing in the world, and so she is a great and powerful dog. When you need to smile, just look at her, and you cannot help but smile.

Todd Mason And Family

I write a lot about strong women and I admire them greatly. Regina Mason, above is one of them. She works hard every minute of every day of her life, and is about nothing but love and gratitude and hard work and family. But I wanted to write about Todd, her husband, the man who built my fences, because he is a strong man and an admirable one. In a world where it sometimes seems as if men are bent on destroying one another and the planet, Todd is the kind of man that reminds me of what it can mean to be a strong man, how good and important a thing that can be.

Todd runs a 400-acre farm in Vermont, has cows, goats, works with the Grange, helps out friends, does the back-breaking work of fence-building. He works in great pain from arthritis and many back injuries, works from dark to dark on his farm and fencing jobs, is meticulously honest and is a good friend. When he built the fence for us on our new farm, he also trimmed trees, moved boulders and did anything he could to help out. You never feel you hired somebody when you work with Todd, you feel you have extended your family. He came over today with Regina and most of his kids (some were away). As hard as he works, he is a devoted husband and father, a quiet and gentle man. When he speaks, you listen. He doesn't say a lot or change his mind much.

Todd came to visit and to check out the grassy pasture behind the barn. We don't have a lot of grass, and there is beautiful grazing land and forest in 17 acres behind the main pasture. I was stumped about using that grass and the water from the stream back there. We need the space for the animals we have and any we might get.  I couldn't afford to fence it all of the way last year, and I told Todd I this wasn't a good time to extend the fence either, there isn't a ton of extra cash lying around. Todd knows we still haven't sold Bedlam Farm and he came over and offered to build the fence and his estimate was so low I asked him if he was charging for labor. Todd can't lie, so he said he wasn't charging for labor.

I said I couldn't accept that, he works too hard not to get paid for his literally back-breaking labor. We went back and forth. He tromped through the back pasture and found several ways to save on the job – wires tacked onto trees instead of posts. He showed me ways to expand the fencing that would include more land and be great for the donkeys but which would also give us easier access to the beautiful woods behind the house. In my panic,  I once thought we should just cut back on animals, but now I plan to be 90 and we might get some goats or more sheep. Who knows what might come to live on Bedlam Farm?

We could walk the dogs back there, hike ourselves, have lunch in the woods. Regina just smiled and shook her head and got out of the way of the negotiations. Todd, she said, will pretty much do what he wants.

Todd ended up offering me a great price for the fencing, and I accepted. He swears he's getting paid for labor as well as material, and I'm not sure I believe him, but it will be great to have that pasture fenced – we will not need to buy hay this summer – and I will make sure he is compensated fairly, one way or another. I am not as strong as Todd, but I am as stubborn.

It is inspiring to me to meet a strong man like Todd, a family man, a friend and somebody whose word is worth it's weight in gold. Todd knows that strength is not only muscle, not just combat and argument,  it is love and friendship and commitment is well. I don't meet a lot of strong men like Todd, but it is immensely uplifting to know they are out there and to have one in my life. A woman e-mailed me yesterday and said she would love to see me photograph a strong man and a strong woman together.

Done.

Pig Barn

Red and I went to the Pig Barn at Bedlam Farm this weekend to pick up a table. I once wanted to use the Pig Barn as my office but Maria used it as an art gallery. I love the character of this barn, and every owner of the farm has signed his name in chalk in the rafters. I feel that the farm will sell this Spring, I just feel it in my bones, and so I need to get my name up in the rafters.

Podcast

Exciting news for me. Maria and I met with Chris Archibee, a good friend and an executive at Mannix Marketing, the designer of my beloved (by me) website. We had lunch at Dish restaurant and every time I meet with Chris, something good happens to the blog. Chris has been the Godfather of bedlamfarm.com from the beginning, and Mannix has supported the growth and design and maintenance of the blog every step of the way. He stops me from doing many things, encourages me in others. I suggested a podcast for Maria, but she just laughed and said it would be good for me. She's right. We agreed today that I ought to have a Bedlam Farm Podcast, and so we are putting it together.

I'll start the Podcast once a week – Sundays I think, and inspired by my farm writing hero E.B. White, I broadcast stories from the farm and the animals who live her and commentary about rural life as well. Maria will join me from time to time.

A podcast is a type of digital media consisting of a series of audio, radio, video, PDF, or EPub files subscribed to and downloaded through the Web or streamed online to a computer, tablet or cell phone. Podcasts are wildly popular, the new radio in many ways. I want mine to be a gentle, thoughtful and hopefully useful commentary about my life on the farm, about the donkeys, dogs, cats and chickens. Stories from the farm, from my life, from the drama of rural life. It will probably take a week or so to get rolling, and I will keep you posted as to how and where to subscribe. They are simple to create, easy to find and listen to.

This is an exciting step forward for me, a new way to talk to my readers and the followers of the farm, a new way to introduce my books and thoughts. I am happy to embrace yet another of the many new tools writers have to connect with their audience and to share their work. I am using print, video, blog and now voice to tell my story.

New Bedlam Farm

I love walking, it's my escape and one of my passions. There are kinds of paths and trails around the new farm to walk and I go myself sometimes, often with Maria and the dogs. The farm has lots of space around it, and we have the feeling of being connected to the world, yet apart. We like it. It is not as imposing a place as the first Bedlam Farm, but it fits us, it is where we are now. In its own way, it is a postcard too.

Life Of A Barn Cat

After the chores in the morning, Flo hops up onto the rocker where somebody is happy to scratch the back of her neck and ears. Today, Maria. Tomorrow, me.

Thanks Jackie

Connie Brooks e-mailed me from Battenkill Books yesterday to tell me there was a surprise waiting for me. I stopped in the bookstore and was shocked – and very pleased – to see a "Recommender-In-Chief" hat that my good friend Jackie from Minnesota – she was the first person called me for book recommendations in my new job as Recommender-in-Chief for Battenkill Books. It seemed a good idea for a writer to help people looking for book recommendations. The job – I work at the store Saturdays from 11a.m. to l p.m. – has mushroomed a bit. I take calls on the phone, people come to the store to get recommendations in person, they e-mail Connie with requests. I've also been doing book reviews as part of this project and they are buying books from Connie.

Jackie and I have had a great time, we are in sync. She's gotten three or four books I've recommended and they've helped her get through the winter and plan for the summer. It's a precious relationship, I am grateful for it. Thanks Jackie. I will wear it in the store. I'll be at Battenkill tomorrow. If you can, buy your books there 518 677-2515 or at your local independent bookstore. Bookstores are precious.

March Storm

Ironic, the first real storm of the winter in March, and Storm Center issued no warnings. This is a beautiful, wind-driven cold storm, but it will, my farmer/neighbor tells me, peter out by noon. Weekend temperature in the 50′s, this is a good bye handshake from winter, my eye is on the new garden in the front of the house, walks with Simon in the woods, no hauling of hay for a few months, walks on the hill. Running around getting the last storm photos of winter, how stark and pretty it is.