The Nursery (SWF)

Soft morning light filters through the sheer curtain--
lace doilies hung to soften the harsh wood of the beams above,



and the sweet smell of hay, bales stacked in wait.
The pastures beyond the barn,
now lush and lively and green.

This cozy room, with its low, whitewashed ceiling and several east-facing windows, is home to our herd of goats, growing smaller each year. Its few elderly members continue their contented existence--trimming the fence lines, chewing their cuds, reclining in spring warmth beside an overgrown cinder block “mountain,” once easily bounded up and over, now best for scratching the itch of winter’s wool.
Barn Swallows build here each spring, nests of mud and straw, firmly plastered to the beams, inches below the white ceiling, and facing the morning light.
Trimmed with long, graceful feather blankets, they appear empty--until I cross before the wall of windows, my shadow creeping over the room.


Five wavering heads rise in silence and thrust orange mouths forward to greet the expected offering of food—
but it is only I.

Barn Swallow nestlings

And so, the lazy slumber reclaims them.




Mother waits outside until the chores are finished here,
watching, through the windowpane, ready.


Her shadow enters and nudges them to wake.
Then she is gone again to the sky.

See more Skywatch here.
And,
more Camera Critters are here.

Up and under

The Loft

Up a narrow stair, flat and steeply pitched against a loft above goat stalls below, the dusty floor opens broadly. The empty space, scattered now with just the few remaining bits of clean straw left from winter’s stacked bales, glowing warmly--the barn board walls, ages old and built around heavy beams of hand hewn oak, lit softly by the first morning rays.




Through one of the pair of small, east-facing windows looking out over the pasture, I have watched a Phoebe perch on the sill above, then, seconds later, disappear into the dimly lit interior. This expansive old barn, no longer housing the dairy cows it was raised to shelter a hundred years ago, but a collection of tractors, plows, mowing decks, garden tools, items to be recycled—and, apparently, one phoebe nest.


I wait and watch quietly, eyes struggling between the bright spikes of light and the shadow just beyond their reach, and see her fly from her silhouetted form, across the loft to the highest point within the gambrel roof. Beside the round vent, 30 feet above the barn floor, she has built her nest—held steady on the old track where pulleys ran back and forth, lifting to the lofts, heavy hay.


Safe, it would seem from most anything.
Up and under.

The Old Barn

Phoebe in the East Window

View more ABC Wednesdays here!

Under the Wire

Tree Swallow, male
Tachycineta bicolor

Our vegetable garden sits a distance from the house—adjacent to the old barn and bordered by the pasture, now grown high in field grasses. Two nest boxes mark the path, across the hill and into the woods.

Each year the strategy is the same.
Plant only what we’re able to defend. For as much as we look forward to the freshness a home garden can provide, so, too, do the others—raccoons, rabbits, deer,…eager to quickly empty it of its tender contents, courteously provided as a buffet within the sanctuary of our yard--
the snarling gardener discovering little more than its stubby remains on a steamy summer morning.


Two fine wires connected to a pulsing electric charge wrap the fertile, roto-tilled earth, dark with years’ turnings of manure, leaves and ash, several inches above its surface. And, though barely seen, its rhythmic pulse warns of its gentle reminder, “All else here is yours, save the tilled ground.”




From a few feet away, a male Tree Swallow stands—the sentinel above his family’s home, their nest in a box set out for Bluebirds—though, each year left to swallows, instead. Our closeness and regular visits never a bother, it would seem. Our ways, tolerated well, perhaps enjoyed—long looks would make it seem so.

One
of eight baby woodchucks

Surveyors of this expanse beyond our watch.
Wiser than we who stretch this fine wire, and wonder who passes unseen—
those yet small enough to pass—
under the wire.

I see you.

Ready for breakfast.

View more ABC Wednesdays here!

Get rich quick!

I’ve been overlooking the obvious--
an opportunity for a lucrative home business, right in my own back yard, just steps from my own back door! And, though I haven’t thoroughly explored this goldmine, from what I have seen, I have quite an ambitious work force already in place.
Imagine the possibilities!
No job is too big…none too small.


Now, to write a business proposal and grab a catchy name.
Web design—everybody’s doing it!

The Old Barn, in a Good Light

The Old Barn,
In a Good Light

Every day begins the same, facing west.
From my seat in the corner of the kitchen, I look out toward woods I cannot yet see, the day’s sun waiting behind me, across the yard.
Broad hickories and spindly locusts stand as black forms reaching tall,
arm in arm, into the deepest blue to say,
“This day will be a fair one.”

Through these trees each evening, I watch the last glimpse of the day’s light slip into the horizon with a great and colorful splash, while dinner bubbles and boils on the stove.
Then, moonlight until morning.
And the next begins, again.

The sun’s rising, though, I almost never see.
Except what light, from behind the barn, sneaks past to tint the tips of the trees, on that fair day—a perfect pink.




And if I rush to the edge of the yard,
and catch it creeping onto the fields,
I find it peeks into the dim east barn windows.

Sunrise on Barn

View more ABC Wednesdays here!

Traces

Great Blue Heron flying over Field

The pond and all around it are still on this frosty morning, glazed with the thinnest of crystals. Lace on the deep and dark, cold water.

From the bank, a heron flies off, never trusting of me to approach without its hurried leaving. Its long legs dragging gracelessly behind as it wrestles against gravity--then slowly overcomes it to circle widely out over the field.


The deer have left their footprints along these paths, too, the ground softer now, and badly tunneled by moles.

What little rain we have gained has barely added a drop to the basin, the edge of the water still falling far short of the cut of the land. In several places along the trail, small locusts show the rubbings of antlers.
They stand, barely alive--mangled uprights, the bark now hanging in shreds.

It all seems so empty on this cold, colorless day.

As if those who visit here are all absent, tucked away somewhere in more warmth. Safely nestled in dens and burrows.
Or flown south.
Because all I find are traces.

I found this well-trod trail leading from the barn, under long grasses, to the field.
Whose might it be?

Footprints

This entry is an update to a ongoing story recorded here.

Perhaps we were seeing a bit of our future, that Sunday afternoon in June, working in the cool, dimly lit interior of the big, old barn. For, our first inkling of another’s presence with us, was discovering tiny footprints captured in one of the small, square slabs of concrete, hand-mixed and left to cure, undisturbed, on the dirt floor.
Preserved in stone.

The footprints, alone, meant nothing. Raccoons, opossums, even woodchucks wandered through its drafty, dark spaces regularly. And skunks often scented the summer nights’ air. But these were different—of a small, young animal’s tentative first steps, alone.

In the days that followed, we caught only shadowy glimpses of the five young kittens hidden beneath the old wooden floor boards where Mama left them to sleep as she wandered the nearby fields for what little she could find.
How she had come to be here, tattered and worn, we could only imagine.
But clearly, of her fading strength, to her young she had given all.
Mama’s kittens became ours that Thursday.
Country roads are not gentle, nor patient with those who linger at the edge.
And so our life with kittens began.

Max, bold and black.
Alexander, kind and gray.
Olivia, tender and disheveled.
Lucy, shy and lovely.
George, spirited and wearing stripes. (adopted)

Max

Alexander

Olivia

Lucy

In several days, we will pass the 6-month mark.
And, of the original five, four kittens remain.

Large, magnificent animals now, with long ruffs and fur-covered toes,
heavy coats and loving spirits,
like none I have ever known.

They live upstairs now, in the house, with us, and Lily, who arrived a year earlier. Together, they race, feather-duster tails held high, the length of our long hallways.
And tumble in a ball of fur, somersaulting across the floor.

Each morning, I’m woken by loving licks of 4 warm, raspy tongues.
Each night, tucked in securely beneath 4 heavy bodies, purring.

Max

Alexander

Olivia

Lucy

Outside the back door, is a small square of concrete, inscribed with several small footprints that catch and hold the morning light.
Footprints that look as though the one who left them was just passing through.
Though those that know the story,
know better.


Safe, at home, they are.
Here.

See more Camera Critters here.