The latest cold front pushed through a couple of days ago, sweeping the skies clear of clouds, making way for sun and wind to give earth some balance with all this standing water and mud. This morning the clouds returned, soft stratus from horizon to horizon. We’ve had hard freezes the last two mornings, and now those stratus clouds sink into drifts of fog, making the drying out slow going. It’s still far too wet for bean picking.
Brad trudged out to feed and check cows early this morning; no babies yet. I’m eager for them to start; I think Brad is too, only for him I suspect it’s tempered with a bit of dread, the kind that makes you set your jaw and heave a sigh as you head out to do a necessary but unpleasant task.
Already we have gained daylight, perhaps as much as an hour in a week’s time. The sleepy short days and ever longer nights crept toward the solstice, inching into that one longest night; it seems the growing sun now leaps into the lengthening of days, as if shaking off the residual drowsiness of an afternoon nap. The gap between sunrise and sunset widens, the arc heads northward again. We wait, for fields to dry out, for calving to begin, for winter to progress and eventually give way to spring…
The clouds now have folded themselves upward into puffs of cumulus, sunlight pushes its way through, and thousands of starlings just outside the house elicit an argument between the nine- and the four-year-old over the right way to frighten them into flight. No amount of explaining will soothe the wronged child. Brad’s return from milling signals the start of dinner preparation, and we wind down this day and head for the next.
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