Road trip once again

My Brand new chauffeur

Bought these to plant beside the front flower bed

Sat here for a while while the chauffeur loaded some hay.

The boss went out to plant corn yesterday and left Alan a stack 'o chores...go to Fort Plain Agway and get barn calcite. The cows are going in and out to pasture now. (You should have seen the rodeo the first day they went out...you simply wouldn't think that dairy cows could or would get up to such stuff. Made the PBR look tame. We don't want them to slip on the floor.) Then head up to the farm where we buy hay and get a load. Not any huge tasks, but a busy schedule just the same.

Anyhow, the kid asked me to ride along. There were any number of reasons why I should have stayed home. The house has been virtually entirely neglected the past few weeks while I have been helping with cows and playing in the garden. My beans need to be replanted as the first planting failed. Ditto potatoes. I could go on and on. But then, how many teen aged boys want their mother along when somebody turns them loose with a pick up truck and a tank of gas?

I climbed in, rolled down the window and away we went and it was so much fun. The sun was shining, it was just warm enough to feel like summer might be coming and the grass was green as Ireland. When we picked up the barn cal, Agway had some fat sassy marigolds for sale. I'd been wanting some for a certain flower bed so into the truck they went. Then there was the aquarium store in Canajoharie. (They have guppies you know.) The kid was delighted to stop in for me. Some women may consider diamonds a girl's best friend, but I am much more fond of sparkly little fish. We bought a pair with white shiny tails and a couple of black snaky patterned ones.

Then we headed off down the winding back roads to where we are buying hay from some friends. Everyone is planting corn apace and the fields look better tended than my living room rug, with the rows from the corn planter still stamped on the smoothly crumbled soil. Our friends live well back in the country, away from all the trains and the Interstate so it was sweetly quiet sitting in one of their back barn yards watching the swallows swoop by. (That is a small part of their place above...took the pictures out the truck window.) Alan hooked up the hay elevator and had the truck full in no time.

All too soon it was time to take our booty and head home. We spent the rest of the afternoon companionably working out in the yard....him tearing down the DR string trimmer that belonged to his grandma. Me planting marigolds and weeding. The dishes didn't get done. The lilac bushes didn't get planted. The DR still doesn't run. (Even after a new spark plug, a cleaned out fuel line, all kinds of priming and pumping and pulling on the starter cord.) Other than a stack of hay and a couple boxes of orange and yellow we didn't have much to show for how we spent our time when the boss came down (and of course HE got a third of the sixty-acre lot all planted.)

However, I couldn't have asked for a better day. The kid and I had a heck of a time...and all that other stuff can get done today....or maybe tomorrow.

***Not to mention, later on I ran in the house during milking to get some bread out to thaw and Liz was right smack in the middle of watching the Preakness. Got to see Big Brown romp as if he was out for a sleepy morning gallop. What a horse!