Doldrums

Sometimes I think February should be outlawed. There are always a few teasing hints of spring, a scent of grass and earth during a short thaw, jingling music of icicles singing their song from the eaves, a single white-crowned sparrow hanging around and darting in for sunflower seeds every couple of days.

However, February is very much not spring, and mostly just slogging slowly through winter with little hope for it. For every thaw there is a swift plunge to single-digit midnights. The stars are as big and bright as cotton balls stuck on a dark blue canvas, but it is too cold to hang around watching them for long.

There is however, Valentines Day, which although very much a faux holiday these days, does feature chocolate. And every now and then you get a sunny day like yesterday, wherein, although all that could go wrong did, it all seemed to breeze right by because the sun was shining and the wind wasn't blowing.

Dried off two of my favorite cows last week. There are some that when their annual six weeks or so off from work rolls around, you swipe the back of your hand across your forehead and sigh with relief. Not so much with Carlene and Bama Breeze, hard-working, good-natured little girls who are for the most part a pleasure to milk.

They stand side by side in the barn, so we will just skip right on by them with the milking machines, no reason to go up in those stalls atall, atall.....except maybe to give ol' Bama a scratch now and then. She sure loves attention.