 |
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
|
||
 |
 |
|
||
|
||||
 |
|
|||
|
||||
|
||||
Signs of LifeDecember 24, 2010 'Twas the night before Christmas and in the middle of my kitchen stood a drying rack draped with five pairs of jeans, one sweatshirt, and two undies that didn't quite dry on the line. Almost but not quite. For three days past the winter solstice this is good. A bright, breezy, just-above-freezing day before I ran out of underwear -- this is very good. I did not see any clotheslines in Oslo. Would clothes dry outdoors with only six hours of daylight, even if the temperature stayed above freezing? I doubt it. My sourdough starter was out on the counter doubling all day, and now I've put half of it to work. It'll spend the night raising batter for tomorrow's bread -- and the rolls I plan to take to Christmas dinner. I'm horse-sitting through the 30th. No, I'm not entirely out of the horse biz. My charges are Coltrane the Dales pony and Contessa the mini -- Rhodry's nemesis the puppyhorse. When I showed up this morning, neither Coltrane nor Contessa was hanging around waiting for hay. This was unusual. I put some hay in the stall, some out in the pasture. No one came to get it. This was very unusual. Coltrane came up, checked it out, ate a mouthful, and returned to the far end of the pasture. No sign of Contessa. This was downright weird. I put 1 and 1 and 1 together and finally caught on: Contessa was loose. Memo to Contessa: If you want to stay loose, you've got to train your accomplice better. With friends like him, who needs the FBI? Two stars in the Big Dipper point the way to the North Star. Coltrane points the way to Contessa. Contessa was not too hard to catch, mainly because I remembered to fill my pocket with grain the first time around. Her escape route was pretty clear: a section of the pasture that's fenced entirely with electric wire. If there was any charge in electric wire, my finger could not detect it. I closed the gate to that section and then, only then, let Contessa back into the pasture. She was in the pasture when I showed up to feed supper. Score one for my side. And I've got several weeks' worth of clean underwear. Bread is rising on the counter. Life is good.
|
|
|||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
 |
|
|||
 |
|
|||
Home - Writing - Editing - About Susanna - Bloggery - Articles - Poems - Contact Copyright ©
Susanna J. Sturgis. All rights reserved. |
||||