Maria is an artist through and through, in the way she thinks, walks, talks, dresses. I suppose it’s obvious that I love just about everything about Maria, perhaps not her laundering skills so much, and one of the things I love is that she is always the same, no matter where she is or what she is doing, she is always an artist. She wore one of her funky red dresses to our wedding, and often wears it out to the pasture to do barn chores and shovel manure.

The only things she changes – and one really learns to do this in a pasture – is to put rubber boots on when go out to do the chores. This morning we were doing our daily manure shoveling together. I rake onto the shovel, she carries the shovel load out to the field. Three donkeys do a lot of dumping each night. I love the sight of her in her new dress – she got it for $13 last week at a thrift shop – digging into the manure pile, hauling it out into the pasture.

It is a good thing one of us has some style, I am walking pile of rumple. I think this is part of being authentic, really, figuring out why you are and standing comfortably in that identity.