This is one of my favorite artists, Robert Strong Woodward, a local one who spent time on the mountain where I pick blueberries. I liked this one because it most looked like the landscape Tom and I traveled through on our road trip for the milk run and to the Coop.
We were going in the truck to A: give it a real trial on various terrains, and B: to pick up my amendment order for the year.
This is where we get milk, eggs, and cream each week. Kira and Gus have recently bought this farm and the pandemic and other things are making it a hard go right now. The source link is about their Go Fund Me fund raiser that they started recently.
We collected our order, patted the farm store cat, and talked with Kira and Gus for awhile. Then we headed down the hill in the truck, headed for the Coop.
It took us a good while to get loaded up because they couldn’t find the organic alfalfa meal they sold me. I had to substitute in organic alfalfa pellets. But we were finally loaded and headed back home, down the highway.
The truck had driven just fine, on the highway and up into the hills. Granted we didn’t do the hills with a load on, mostly because of gas prices. So it’s a relief to know it can now do long trips if necessary. Thank you, Tom!
We were able to get the truck behind the house and unload it. We dragged out the big totes, put the 2 new metal trash cans there and loaded them up with stuff the local critters find delectable. Then we moved all the totes back in, folded the tarp that was now dry and put it in the pile in the back.
Tom headed out to collect family in the truck as he is still puttering around on it, fine tuning and preparing to make repairs to the floorboards.
Before I left I had wrapped the 2 birthday presents for this cutie. She turned 6 in January, but I was sick. I also set up 2 activities for this little live wire. One was the broken flower pot from the fallen plant. It had been on my counter (to annoy me) for almost 2 weeks. I put it in a box with a hammer and a pair of safety glasses and hoped her mom would think it ok if she turned it into small pieces of drainage for future plants.
The other was a box of origami paper and instruction books. She had been interested in that just before I got sick and so my sister sent it out, as she didn’t want it any more.
So she smashed up the flowerpot first and had a great time doing it. Then we started making a fox from the origami, but it was too complicated in the end, so it didn’t get finished.
She wanted to smash another flowerpot so we went down and went through my stock and found a very salted up one. That kept her busy for about 10 minutes and her mom and I got to talk a bit.
They had brought my birthday presents. Hazel had drawn my old cat out on grass and her mom had made scented beeswax sachets, near my elbow. Once she gave up on the fox, she got her birthday sticker book out and started making the dogs in it.
Bryde, March 2022
When she tired of that, I got out my large collection of colored pencils and lots of paper and some tape and she made a pencil people town. It had a stadium full of pencil people in the middle of a town square that had 4 houses around it. There was a Pencil Tower that was also the Town Hall.
Then she drew roads around the town, ending in a Pencil Lake. Next were houses and pencil people and pencil dogs with their doghouses. She put a large library at the bottom, with a book weathervane.
In between these activities she would “leg wrestle” with us as she lay on the floor. That’s what’s happening in the first photo.
Then it was time to go and she had gotten a hug goodbye and was being her usual wiggleworm self. It was good to see them as I had not since before Christmas. They will be back on the 3rd weekend of April as we resume our 3rd weekend visits.
A long day but fun spent with the good people in my life.
Sunday I am making French toast with my sister, while we are on the phone. It’s a late birthday present that she wanted.
In the afternoon the contractor will come and hopefully we will finish the barnboard wall.