November Hill farm journal, 5

The chromium millennium ahead of us, I gather, is going to be an age whose ideal is a fantastically unnatural human passivity. We are to spend our lives in cushioned easy chairs, growing indolent and heavy while intricate slave mechanisms do practically everything for us as we loll. 

-Henry Beston, Northern Farm

To get to the barn and the farm at large I must first pass through the well-guarded back gate:

Pippin extracts a belly rub from everyone who passes.

This week I have spent time raking fallen branches and twigs to the base of the trees from which they fell. We've had windy thunderstorms and the trees are shedding the weak and dead branches in much the same way the dogs and cats are shedding fur. The fallen wood mulches down fairly quickly and the larger pieces are good for kindling for the wood stove and also for my garden fencing project if I ever get to it.

While I rake I take any stones that have made their way to the surface and stack them by fence posts. At some point when I find holes I retrieve the stones again and use them for filler. Sometimes I think on a farm much of what I do is move things from one place to another and back again. Horse manure, compost, sticks and branches, stones. There is always too much of something that needs moving and then later is needed again. In a way these are chores of maintaining balance, which is probably why I don't mind doing them.

The vegetable garden is doing very well and with all the rain we haven't needed to water in weeks. We are eating big salads nearly every day and have enough rainbow chard and other greens to feed a small army. 

The various squash and pumpkin plants are blooming, the blueberry bushes are laden with tiny blue berries, and the garlic and onions are doing their thing too. The tomatoes and cucumbers are growing, and the herbs as well. Broccoli and cabbage are growing taller. I haven't yet looked to see if the heads are forming yet. 

I still have a few things to plant. Sunflower seeds, chamomile seeds, catnip, and I need to pot a Meyer lemon seedling and lemon grass to summer outside and come in each winter along with the house plants.

There is still some weed-eating to be done and fence maintenance. After this next rain moves through today and tomorrow it will be time to harrow the arena again. 

We also have a very young tulip poplar that volunteered at the edge of the vegetable garden. It has come back from the frost which killed all its leaves and needs to be transplanted to a more suitable location. We'll need to protect it from deer and equines but since we have lost two huge tulip poplars in the front field to marauding horses and donkeys I'm grateful for this young one that might grow and replace the foliage that gives us so much privacy each spring through fall.

This week I have been able to walk the farm and note what needs doing without going into a panic about how much there is to do and how far behind we tend to be. There are always things that pop up needing attention that pull us away from the ongoing work of keeping things in order. 

Again, the issue of too much and not enough and finding ways to balance it all so that what needs doing gets done, what can wait does, and sometimes the things I think need doing take care of themselves without any intervention at all on my part. That's the beauty and possibly the real lesson of living on a patch of land. It's alive and has its own mind and way of being. If you stop and pay attention, especially to the things you think you need to do but don't quite get to, you learn about how the earth and the animals, the wind and the rain, and the process of natural decay often do these chores for you. 

It's May on November Hill and it is so green and beautiful!

garden envy and some ducklings!

I was in Durham yesterday for an appointment and stopped by Duke Gardens to enjoy the afternoon. The gardens were a favorite spot when I worked at Duke and studied there, it's where my husband and I got married, and it became a favorite family destination for years when we lived in Durham. We try to visit several times a year. It's a gorgeous place.

Yesterday we bought some lunch and ate it by the duck pond. The ducks, swans, and turtles were all clustered nearby and I ended up with a duck friend who came within inches and then settled down in arms' reach for a nap. The two swans came on the shore a few feet from me to groom. It was lovely. I took photos of all of them but this is one of my favorites:

There were two duck families on the pond but these were the younger ducklings. They were quite independent and giving their mama a hard time. They all hopped up on this rock and stayed there, even when she swam a little away and called to them to join her. She had to come back and just hang out with them. Then one of the ducklings took off on his/her own and mama had to keep an eye on the brood while going after the wanderer. Minutes later they all hopped off into the water in different directions. I can't imagine! It was so much fun to watch them.

Later we wandered to the formal gardens and I literally shrieked with delight. The foxgloves and allium are all at peak bloom and were simply gorgeous. 

This photo doesn't do justice to how lush and beautiful it is there right now. Sometimes I wish I had time to create a formal or cottage garden and keep it manicured to look like this. As it is, I have beautiful things growing and blooming but there are grape vines threading through the roses, weeds in the beds, and nothing looks as lovely as it could if I were out there keeping it up. Sigh. 

But thankfully I can visit Duke Gardens and enjoy the fruits of others' labor!

My husband and I got married in the pergola some 21 years ago. At that time it was totally covered in wisteria and remained that way until last year when they removed the wisteria vines. I wish I'd taken a shot yesterday of the long walk up the middle aisle through all these terraced beds that my dad and I took during the wedding march. It was a glorious place to have a wedding and I love that we can visit whenever we want.

It's odd to see the pergola so bare but I see they have something (maybe the same wisteria?) climbing up already. It won't take long to cover the structure again.

This morning I looked out at the red roses and the tiny white primroses and several goldfinches flew into the garden to add their color. There are purple irises and even with the weeds it was pretty spectacular. A few hours of weeding, a load of mulch, and maybe I can get the November Hill gardens in shape. 

simple pleasures of the mid-day

Around noon I head to the kitchen to begin the haven of chores that mark the middle of the day for me during the week. 

Elevenses for the Corgis, a snack and vehicle for the joint supplement and fish oil and vitamin E they get. This week I'm clearing the freezer so they had their supplements mixed in with some chicken stock and chicken meat we put away and forgot to use.

On to the laundry room to soak Keil Bay's mid-day meal of Timothy balance cubes. I switch out the laundry while the cubes absorb the water, then grind half a cup of flax seeds to stir in to the mix. Back to the kitchen to mix up his HA gel to set up in the fridge. 

While in the laundry room I noticed the pile of half chaps and riding gloves looked like they needed cleaning so I wander back and get the sponge and saddle soap and spend 10 minutes rubbing the leather clean and making a nice stack of chaps and gloves by the back door, easy to grab on the way to the barn for a ride.

The Corgis have finished their snack, noted by the sound of empty bowls scraping around the kitchen floor. I load up the dishwasher with dirty dishes and then go put the clean laundry piled on the chair away.

I don't know why this grouping of chores has become such a blessing in my day. I like doing things that nourish the animals and I enjoy having the little bits of time while I wait for the cubes to soak and the gel to gel to fill with quick irregular chores that make me happy. 

Some days I use that time to clean the living room windows where Bear Corgi has smudged them up with his nose. Some days I pick a spot in any room and do some cleaning with a bright blue rag and some Murphy's oil soap. There's always something to be done and thankfully enough chores that make me happy that I can easily avoid the ones that don't.

Sun Kings

They later became the Rain Kings again but for a brief time this morning they were soaking up the sun.

the writing life and ideas that bloom

Yesterday I met a good writer friend for coffee and then lunch so we could catch up on what we're both working on. We'd intended to maybe do a little writing work while we were there but of course the conversation and catching up expanded itself and we didn't get to the work part.

One of the most valuable things a writer can do with other trusted writer friends, especially those who know your work, is to bounce ideas off them and do a little talking about the projects in process. Some people say that talking too much about a writing project drains the needed energy one has to have to actually WRITE it, and to a point I agree with this, but there is absolutely a place for casting the seeds of ideas out and letting your writer friends help you water them to see what sprouts.

I'm editing one of the Claire novels right now, and am on the third full pass through it, looking at structural issues and trying to sort out the best way to lay out the book.

[ As is the way of the writing life on November Hill, as I was typing this post the thunderstorm I've been watching rolled in quite suddenly and I had to leap up, shove my feet into muck boots, and dash to the barn to let the herd in. There's nothing like a quick stall-by-stall muck, bringing a bale of hay into the feed room to feed from during the rainy day ahead, topping off water buckets, and listening to whinnies from the shelter as the equines wait to be let in! All while the winds whip up and the thunder cracks and you know the rain is going to fall very soon. ]

But now I'm safe in the house again and back to thinking about writing and writer friends and ideas.

I'm also working on a special project for the Magical Pony School books. 

And I'm keeping my hand in with short pieces of fiction and nonfiction these days. As I was describing the piece I'm working on in an effort to entice a certain literary journal, my friend said something about that being the prelude to a novel. She said the words, I stopped and thought about them, and that little seed she cast out on the table between us got watered as we talked it over. By the time I left I had written it down, expanded on it, and did the same again when I got home. It definitely sprouted. 

The discourse, the banter, is what led to that sprouting. I highly recommend it. Whether you're a writer or a fine artist or a photographer or a horsewoman needing inspiration, make a lunch date with a like-minded friend and see what happens!