Friends and family

Sometimes winter starts to get me down...usually along about February. I know it is the same for a good many other folks too. I have one I-friend in Calgary who has been dealing with temps of minus forty and lower for over a week now. Other friends in other places have their share of weather and illness related woes too.


This week though people have done me such kindnesses that I feel as warm as if it were a humming June day with robins and thrushes singing the dawn chorus to the mornings and the garden springing up in green shoots like punctuation in the dark, rich earth.


First a dear friend stopped by to vaccinate kitties and to give me a beautiful little stained glass border collie, which somehow captures the very essence of border collie, crouched, intent and staring....giving the world "the eye." I hung him where he can peer down the driveway through the big front window, watching for whatever may appear there. He is so perfectly collie that I get a little thrill of delight every time I see him.....thank you!

Then another friend gave us all little boxes Valentine chocolates, literally a sweet thing to do...thank you too.

And last night, when we came home from the Farm Bureau meeting someone with whom I have conversed on the Internet since 2001 (and been shellacked by at Battleboats and Jamble many times as well) sent me a short video clip. Everyone was shouting around me (we are a loud lot here when passionate) about some horse they had seen along the road and I couldn't hear what was going on in the movie, but I could tell it was something special. Later, when all was quiet, I turned up the volume. To my throat-tightening amazement, the video featured his "bingo ladies" (he calls bingo where he lives) wishing me a Happy Valentines Day. Imagine a whole room full of people in a distant city, all of whom I have never met, getting together to do such a nice thing. I was at a loss for words....except thank you from the bottom of my heart. I have never had a nicer Valentine.

Last, but not least by any measure, when I awoke this morning (later than I had any right to having been up way too late at a the meeting) unfamiliar lights were shining over from the barn. Liz was up working on calving in Char, number 116, who is still, even as I write, taking her sweet time having her baby. She had been up at two and again at four and was still awaiting developments....thanks Liz for the extra sleep and freedom from worry. It is pretty special and will be missed.

How can I be gloomy? Thanks again to all the good people who are kind enough to think of us and help us get through the doldrums of February in such special ways.

PS...... I requested in the Farm Side this week that someone send us robins if they saw any. Before it even ran in the paper (it runs today) Liz spotted a huge flock down on 30A...so thank you too, whomever was kind enough to share their spring harbingers with us....we are most grateful!


****Update: Naturally it is a bull...check out that weird ear!



****Mrs. Mecomber sent me a meme. I will do my bit here