Things I Think About While Digging Holes Alone

I'm not sure, but it is starting to seem like Spring. The Bald Eagle is sitting in her nest and the weekend was warm and sunny. Of course then it snowed Sunday morning and Monday morning was a cloudy 16 degrees.

I missed out on seeing the grandkid Saturday. Everyone headed down to the city while I took advantage of the warm and sunny day to plant a few fence posts around the truck patch. Our electric company has replaced some poles in our area, and I managed to grab a few. I know I should really split them lengthwise into smaller posts. I remember the old timers telling me I could get more posts, and they would last longer split to the heartwood, but I was just happy to cut them to length and plant them whole. That was work enough for one fellow of a certain age. I wonder... am I one of those old timers now... ? If so, I better get up a good story to support my actions, that way it'll seem like I know more than I do.

While I was pulling up the old fence to replace it, I managed to find a flattened out pair of my cheater spectacles in the mud of last year's garden fenceline. I remember exactly when I lost them. It was last July. Kelly and Kate had gone to New York for a work trip and a little sightseeing since we don't really get out much. Kate, who is usually my right hand, really needs to see more of the outside world, if only as a cautionary tale. I am generally content to do my world traveling from within a book. "Reading is that fruitful miracle of a communication in the midst of solitude."* Otherwise I am kind of content in my own little patch of Earth. This was during that really hot spell that we had last chicken harvest season. Because of the heat, the sheep and goats become almost nocturnal, especially during bright moonlit nights.

Anyway, the night I lost these particular glasses, I was on my fourth or fifth episode of chasing sheep and goats out of the garden. Betty, our resident mischievous teenage dairy goat had learned that she could thrust her head through the electric net, then pull it down to short it out. The sheep, though not willing to risk the mild shock, were absolutely willing to share in the reward of a garden well eaten. The short yelp that Betty let out before she let everyone in was just enough to keep awakening me for yet another round of "Mutiny on MY Bounty."

This particular match up left me head over heels, then flat on my face while my indignant herd mosied back out into the pasture, having destroyed my sweet corn, blackberries, strawberries and most of the annual garden. The good news is I hadn't broken a hip and there was precious else left to tempt them back again this particular evening.

As I rolled over and lay there in the moonlight, sweating, covered in dirt and sheep manure, I panted and contemplated the moon. The katydids called and a small but welcome breeze tickled over me. I know Marcel Proust had reminded me to "always try to keep a patch of sky above your life," but I was not sure this is what he meant. I did remember things past, but at that moment I was sore, tired and frustrated. Then Marcel said "We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it to the full." That's when I told that little Frenchman I had had enough. I showered and headed to bed.

That is why I buy my spectacles by the box and why I am still rebuilding fences. Robert Frost be damned.

Thanks for Listening,

Dave

*Marcel Proust, yet again. He's a talky little fellow. I have still never completed all of the volumes of "A Remembrance of Times Past" even after over forty years of working at it. Maybe my priorities are skewed...