• Home
  • Blog
  • Me. Me. Me.
  • Publications
  • That 1st Novel
  • More!
  • Contact
AMY SMITH LINTON

Paleo Crafts

8/17/2022

10 Comments

 
This has been a summer of chaff.

Bits of pith, bark shavings, and plant dust form a drift around my perch as if straw –– and this would not be a stretch, given the bizarre and crabby march of physical aging –– had begun to leak from my seams.

But for once, a phenomenon NOT the byproduct of birthdays and hard mileage! Yay me.

Instead, these little scraps and nubbins of vegetation come as an extension of curiosity.

Perhaps there were a few seasons of Alone, percolating in the back of my mind. That and  finding the niche YouTube channel of Sally Pointer.

Whatever –– why grasp for justification? 
​
Picture
​If the internet has taught us nothing, it's that there are more random activities to generate human joy than anybody can shake a keyboard at.

It started with a sewing project last spring; inspired by Bernadette Banner, I built an 18th-Century shirt by hand.

A super-floofy outfit item that doesn't quite fit as I had hoped. One cuff is significantly smaller than the other, and there's no attractive way for me to cinch down that amount of fabric.

But I'll try again, because honestly –– the detailing is amazing.  
Picture
Picture
Picture
It's just a hop, skip, and a jump from hand sewing a pirate shirt to creating cordage from plants, right?  A mere matter of, oh, 400 or so centuries into the past. 

In prehistory, plain cordage (aka twine, yarn, two-ply thread) was used for snares, nets, for lashing x to y, and, step by step, into fabric. Many plants –– nettles, willow, basswood, berry brambles, burdock, rhubarb, etc., etc. –– grow stringy fibers known as "bast." 

It's a thing I missed learning as a kid, though I was fascinated by wildcrafting in general. 
Picture
Stinging nettle. The queen of the field. Locate by feel.
Picture
Basket willow (the chartreuse color is a dead giveaway).
The Would-Be Farm has enough bast-on-the-hoof to keep a schoolbus full of crafty cordsfolk busy until the next Ice Age. 

And so during this summer's regatta roadtrips, I have been spinning straw into gold. Rapunzel and that patient sister with the enchanted swan siblings?  They got nothin' on me. 

Wither went I, along came the bundle of dried plant, a glass of water, and piles of chaff. My technique improved with each ell. 
Picture
A sample tangle: thistle, blackberry brambles, basswood bast, green willow, and soft brome.
My sister (an artist, mind you, a person who has spent countless years creating things –– and embracing the pure joy of the creative process) examined my coil of work.  Failing to stifle her mirth, she had to say, "Wow!, Since garden twine is so expensive and hard to come by..."

Call it artesian garden twine.

Or not. Again, why scramble around in search of reasons?

The heart wants what the heart wants.
​
​Today, it wants to make something that's just as cool now as it was when our ancestors were dodging aurochs and doodling on cave walls.


Picture
About 500 roadmiles' worth of green willow twine. Rough texture and a heavenly scent.
Picture
All those black plastic paint buckets...I knew they'd come in handy.
10 Comments

Meanwhile, on The Farm...

6/30/2022

8 Comments

 
Regardless the state of the world, and the awful things that are going bump in the daytime, the Would-Be Farm is full of urgent and pleasant chores.

It's the first thing on my spring chore list: Clear trail. Which means cutting up fallen logs (both emerald ash borer and something that might be pine beetles are burning through the woods).

​Much farther down the list, but equally important for navigating is to locate the two critical culverts in the big field. Because nobody likes to slip into the ditch.

The grass is more than 4 feet tall in places, so there's an element of fun and danger in scouting the way in the 4WD mule. 
Picture
There's other tidying to do, like sweeping up pollen and other detritus at the –– still critter-proof! –– gazebo in the woods.  
Picture
And installations! Last December, my favorite skipper constructed two bat houses and a barred owl nesting box for me.

It wasn't chinchy to get this first one mounted on a 20-foot pole and then –– like the mother of all mast-stepping moments –– raising the pole upright and settled into its post-hole, but the result is magnificent.  

We hope the bats find it and make it home. The local populations are –– we hear –– rebounding from  white-nose-fungal colony collapse.
Picture
Sadly, since we are only part-time farmers, and because poultry are not notable for excellent traveling habits, we don't plan on adding chickens to the mix.

​Good thing we have good neighbors who could not walk past that stock tank full of tiny chicks this spring at the feed store. And you do have to buy six at a time. 
Picture
In addition to being unable to resist the charms of chooks, the neighbors have a 6-year-old granddaughter who has nothing more pressing on her to-do list than to hand-tame the chickens. I'm thinking about sewing them (and her) matching tutus.

This summer's largest project hones Jeff's carpentry and patience both. Without the camper trailer to protect, the shed suffered a bit of a breakdown, or possibly a depressive episode of some kind, drooping visibly and listing downhill.

The strategy that seems to work for us (QED, baby!) when this kind of thing occurs in our lives, is to get help, get to work, and find new meaning.  
Picture
Transforming the shed into a barn has meant shoring up the structure and adding a concrete floor.
Followed by enclosing the space and helping it to a new identity by color.
Picture
Picture
And when not holding metal panels in place while Mr. Linton does his drill thing, I have about a thousand daffodil bulbs to re-arrange.

I started in 2015 by transplanting "Scrambled Eggs" a fluffy double-flowered daffodil, from where the previous owner of the farm had bedded them by the old farmhouse. I wanted them where I could see them, so I stuck them hither and yon. They are prolific and have doubled, tripled, quadrupled in number.

As some may remember, my sweet mother-in-law and I put in 200 or so jonquil bulbs a few years ago. They too have multiplied and started to crowd one another.

Plus she gave me dozens of bulbs to start in Florida this winter. It's not a kind climate for jonquils, so those bulbs also came to the farm.  
Picture
Picture

I transplanted or replanted maybe 200 bulbs last week. Digging up the plants, feeling for the bulbs amidst the other roots and rocks, removing them feet first through a chunk of turf, then putting each chubby knob back into its own neat divot...I don't know what else will come next spring, but I thoroughly expect to have a glorious crop of flowers. ​
Picture
8 Comments

Looking and Seeing

6/7/2022

2 Comments

 
It's not a fancy camera, but it does allow me to take a very close (if not entirely focused) close-up. It's often a surprise when I put the images onto my laptop to see just what turns up in these photos.  
Picture
This sweet green plant is a wild garlic (aka "ramp"). I was interested in how the droplet of water holds itself together within the fold of the leaves.
 
Picture
Forget Paris, we'll always have midden.

​The Would-Be Farm has at least two separate dump piles full of jetsam. We cleared out a trailor-load this spring, hauling away one and a half broken pot-bellied wood stoves, a white enameled cooking stove (such an eyesore!), miles of metal and wire scrap, and cubic yard after cubic yard of disintegrating plastic junk.

The next layer down revealed a surprising number of unbroken glass items, including this prescient cough medicine bottle.  

​The former inhabitants of the Would-Be farm were brand loyal to Pepsi and Jim Beam, for long enough for the Pepsi bottles to evolve from one shape to another to another.  I suppose they also had diabetes.  
Picture
It's known as mud season; moving even the 4-wheel-drive mule across a field is a slippery clay adventure in the spring. As each shoe grows its own brick of mud, a person develops a sort of "Big Lick" walking gait. It's part of the inspiration for my rock stepping stones.
​
Still, looking up, the season also has its crystal-clean moments.
2 Comments

The Would-Be Farm: Live from the Catwalk

5/10/2022

2 Comments

 
It's the Spring 2022 collection! Can you hear to pop-pop-popping of the cameras? Live from the Would-Be Farm, I give you...a fashion show of sorts.

They prowl the stage.
Picture
Picture
They have cheekbones to die for.
Picture
Picture
Some trot. 
Picture
Picture
Or caper.
Picture
Picture
Others preen and strut.
Picture
Some amble, even.
Picture
Picture
Many –– so many! –– are ready for their close-up, Mr. deMille. 
Picture
Coyote.
Picture
Picture
Squirrel armpit.
Picture
Picture
Bear? Mysterious hairy beastie? Deer standing with trotters akimbo?
Picture
The mysterious hairy beastie that dragged the game camera away; I worried about thieving neighbors until we found the camera, beat up, 40 yards off the trail. And this our only clue.
Picture



​Please disregard the off dates on these game-camera photos. The tiny chip's worth of brains that power the camera occasionally lose track.  Reminding me, uselessly, of the first rule of time travel: ascertain your temporal location.

​

2 Comments

Would-Be Farm: End of an Era

4/15/2022

2 Comments

 
It seems like only yesterday: those exciting the first couple of months as landowners trying –– without success or joy –– to imagine staying in a tent at the Would-Be Farm.  

​Even for a few days at a time, it's just too much cooking and cold wind, early sunsets and muddy boots.

Picture
In the spring of 2014, we found a used camper at the back of an RV lot.  We drove the 1985 Sportsman (so much orange plaid!) away for $800 bucks, hoping it would make the trip to my sister's lawn.  A few solid days of rehab, a whitewashing, and voilá! a place to sleep, cook, and close the bathroom door.
Picture
Picture
Bringing the Sportsman over to the farm was like the first part of a buddhist koan for capitalists: If a camper breaks apart on the twisty road, how attached are we to this material item?

We were not tested. It held together even over those bumps and muddy ruts.
Picture
We docked the camper on a bluff overlooking the marshy stream, the old barn foundation, and the antique windmill. Base Camp. 

It became almost immediately clear that Base Camp was by nature slightly too porous and fragile to stay intact in the North Country. The tin-foil roof leaked and some important wooden structure was spongy.  We had visions of a foot or two of snow rendering Base Camp into a compacted oblong of foam and tin.

That autumn, we rustled up carpentry talent in the form of Jeff's brother John, my sister Sarah, and Sarah's friend Curt Dundon and had them put our muscle to work constructing a shed roof over Base Camp.
Picture
My sweet elderly Boston Terrier, Lilly, was there in her usual supervisory position. To this day, her ratty little footprints can be seen on the clear roof panels of the shed.
Picture
Over the years, we slept like neatly stacked logs in our small bed in Base Camp. We drank innumerable cups of scalding hot tea and watched the weather come up the valley from a drafty inside. We berthed houseguests under the dining banquet. We saw deer and coyotes and turkeys wander by.  

Base camp grew more porous, though while mice found portals, raccoons did not.

Then came the morning when the thermometer outside read 28° F.  The inside thermometer, likewise, read 28 big degrees Fahrenheit. From my cozy nest of wool and goosedown, I said to my favorite skipper, "I don't know what else it's going to be, but the cabin starts with a wood stove."

We finished the interior of the cabin during that first plague summer of 2020, channeling anxiety into planks and nails and paint.
Picture
Through 2021, we kept Base Camp intact for houseguests, but perhaps we revealed her mousy shortcomings a bit too liberally; only one set of visitors moved in for a weekend. Other guests made themselves comfy on the expanded level parking area with access to shore-power. 

In any case, April of 2022 was time to play taps and send Base Camp along her dharmic way.

​We unbuilt the shed a little, which is to say, Jeff defied gravity and removed beams as well as yanking the A/C unit off the top of the camper and then, once the camper cleared the beams, replacing the beams AND the A/C.  

Not thinking, I charged into the camper to retrieve the fire-extinguisher and a box of potting gear while he was tap-dancing on the roof.  One could nearly see the imprint of his boot in the vinyl-covered ceiling.
Picture
We dug a pair of trenches for the wheels –– to keep the profile low, and ended up deflating the rear pair of tires (stale air!).  The fact that all four tires held air is remarkable; the tires had to be 20 years old, and the porcupines failed to nibble on them.  
Picture
We first tugged and then pushed with the tractor and astonishingly enough, Base Camp submitted to being heaved onto the driveway.

The next morning, hitching the truck up, we relived the koan:  what if the hubs seize up or an axel gives out? what if the trailer's back breaks or the hitch lets go and Base Camp goes sailing into a ditch?

"It's just as easy to call for a tow truck from the side of the road as it is to get them to find us here," we consoled ourselves. 

Our better helmsman took the wheel and, sticking to backroads and driving 45 (sorry speedy little car! sorry guy! sorry big pickup! sorry beat-up Suburu! sorry to you too!) we winced over potholes and gritted our teeth when the suspension rattled. And in about 30 minutes, the truck eased Base Camp into the muddy parking lot of the one salvage yard that scraps campers.

I felt a pang, seeing Base Camp among the wrecks, but that big wheel of dharma will keep turning.

So let us charge our glasses and offer a toast to Base Camp: the best $800 house of all time. This may –– or may not –– be your final resting ground. I suspect you have another season of shelter for humans as well as small rodents in your diminutive chassis. Hail Base Camp! Fair winds to ye! 
Picture
As for the shed, we have plans to transform it into a barn over the summer. A red one, as befits a farm.
2 Comments

Would-Be Farm: Fish

4/8/2022

0 Comments

 
Every spot on this sweet blue globe of ours has its miracles:  bioluminescent dolphins speeding under a sailboat on a calm night in the Gulf of Mexico like constellations on the move, the sound of peepers demanding the return of Persephone from the underworld, the scent of actual chestnuts roasting on an open fire. They happen all the time, but we only sometimes notice.

For several years, neighbors at the Would-Be Farm regale us with the walleye run. Early in the spring, the story goes, northern walleye gather to spawn.  The walleye –– Sander virtreus –– is a nice little freshwater fish, delicious and sporting to catch, a beefy cousin in the perch family.

"You look for their big googley eyes at night," we heard. It's a natural wonder.  
​
Picture
Each spark an eye of a walleye.
It usually happens too early in the season for Mr. Linton and me. We miss maple season. We miss ice fishing, and generally, we miss the walleye.

But not this year. Spring is dawdling, despite the peepers' chorus. We are here early. Our first nightfall, we bee-lined from the Would-Be Farm to the rapids of the Indian River.

Flashlights revealed ambiguous tan shapes for a moment until our eyes reconciled the truth: those are fish, and those are indeed big glowing googley eyes, as promised. But in such astonishing volume.

SO many fish. 
Picture
At the flash of my camera, each googley eye showed as a spangle –– a spark –– a star –– in the madly rushing water.

There's no flinging about like salmon, no crazy aggression, just this seething vision of piscatorial mass. 

We stood by the roar of the river (the waterfalls are just out of frame in these photos, cold and brutal in the dark) for a long while, meeting their googley gazes under the cloudless starry night.  Then, shivering, we chased the beams of our flashlights back to the truck.  

On the far edge of the parking area, the game warden eyed us but didn't bother getting out of the truck.

The locals have been known to fill their wading boots with walleye and then squelch right past the officer, equal parts insouciant and insolent. But Mr. Linton and I might have been wearing big mouse ears. Obviously tourists. Just here to see the sights and move on.

0 Comments

The Would-Be Farm: More Fruit

1/2/2022

2 Comments

 
Early in the spring of 2021, I took a page from Mr. Linton's gardening playbook.

​His gangster style involves standing over the lychee tree or the pomelo with a pair of gardening shears.  

He'll give the tree a sidelong look and whisper something like, "Right, here's how it goes: grow fruit or get this <brandishing the snips>. Your choice." 


It works more often than not.

Farming is brutal. 
Picture
In 2015, I stuck a couple of pear trees into the ground without knowing my land very well.

As it happens, the soil is thin just there, with bedrock only a short root away. And the wind whistles up and over the little bluff. I imagine it's as bitterly cold a spot in the winter as any I could have found had I been looking for it.
But trees can be stubborn, and though it looked as if they froze back to the rootstock year after year, the pair o pears did keep sending up wistful fronds in the spring.

​They were a 
Mutt and Jeff pair: one short and bushy, the other tall and spindly. During the summer of 2020, they –– like all the fruit trees we've planted –– benefitted from a whole summer of care.

​I watered them. I sprayed with Neem oil. I plucked nasty caterpillars and hungry Japanese beetles from their limbs. I snipped off unhealthy-looking stalks (I fear fireblight) and weeded. They still looked pretty wimpy.
Picture
At the end of the summer of 2020, I decided I'd probably cull them come spring. So much of farming is editing, come to think of it: tearing things out and moving them around or having to put them into the discard pile. Sigh.

I didn't say anything to the trees –– after all, winter does a lot of my hatchet-work for me.


Come spring, however,  I pushed a shovel into the dirt around the littler of the two, apologizing as I tussled it from its shallow home. I held the truncated rootball in my hand for a long moment next to the neighboring pear tree. "Look, buddy," I told the tree. "I don't enjoy doing this. I'm going to give you another summer. Think about it, okay?"
Picture
The result: a half-dozen delicious red Bartlett pears, perfectly ripe.

That'll do. 
2 Comments

The Would-Be Farm: Rock the Steps

10/31/2021

4 Comments

 
What might  the principal exports of the Would-Be Farm be?

Apples? Rhubarb? Wild turkey? Hickory nuts? Cherry tomatoes? Okay, we have done pretty well with the garden but truth be told, our most reliable products are burdocks, porcupines, and rocks.

Haven't found much use for burdocks and porcupines, but rocks --

I only meant it to be a couple of strategically placed stepping stones.

Instead, as rock-moving projects in my world tend to do, the idea morphed and grew.


Picture
We built the cabin on the side of a hill, on piers (or stilts as they would be called, oddly enough, in a coastal setting).

​It makes a nicely shaded area under the living room where we can park the tractor and what-not.

Because this was a very wet summer, however, the down-below area was a clay-pit.

​The little boat trailer sunk to its axel. Walking around down there meant acquiring an inches-thick sole of clay stuck to the bottom of our shoes.

Solution: pour concrete.   

Picture
Picture
A levitating propane tank. Huh. Don't see that every day.
After some thought, we decided against doing our own concrete work. The guys managed to dig, gravel, and move the concrete by wheelbarrow from where the 'rete truck backed into Jeff's velvet field of green in a single day.

(PS, it took us only a week or so to fill those ruts and overseed the area with clover. The scars on the field are nearly invisible.
So we have a magically smooth concrete floor down below, perfect for parking stuff and enjoying the breeze.
​
Of course, if you build it, they will come. But anybody wanting to get there will have to make a pell-mell run downhill from the driveway to get to the down-below.

Or use my decorative but winding stepping path through the rock garden.

Neither option is ideal, especially when you just want to turn off the hose or grab the little wagon. 
Picture
Picture
So steps.  

I meant to just put a couple of flagstones into the ground, but then the stones started piping up and the hill was asking for more...
Picture
4 Comments

A Balm by Any Other Name...

8/12/2021

2 Comments

 
Picture
The Would-Be Farm has had a wet 2021 summer. The grass grows like weeds. The weeds grow even faster. But the flowers have been pretty glorious, honestly.

Last year, my long-suffering sister agreed to start some of my eccentric seed choices. In March, when gardeners in the North Country begin to stare longingly at anything green in hopes that it might be alive, grow-table real estate is valuable. It was a generous offer.

So I sent packets of ground cherry seeds, monarda seeds, borage seeds with my hope. 


The ground cherries refused en mass to start, and the borage, once started, too closely resembled a weed and in June was twice accidentally whacked and gave in to entropy without fuss.
 
But monarda –– monarda was the standout: each seed sprouted and refused to be cowed by last summer's drought.
Picture
Back in April in that first plague year, under the grow-lights, my sister sister looked at the monarda starts with suspicion. "Are these," she asked me dubiously, "bee-balm?"

​Me, consulting the inter webs: Um, yes.

No wonder these seeds had sprouted: the stuff had taken over a whole corner of her flower-garden. I could have as much as I like yanked out of her garden. For crying out loud. 
Picture
Sure enough. Those wee four-leafed starters from last year turned into thigh-high big bursts of vivid color: clear red, pink, deep fuschia. The scent is a bit like oregano, strong and –– allegedly –– unappealing to some of the hungry natives of the Would-Be.

I don't know if deer and rabbits and porcupine and woodchucks and all will continue to avoid the plantings. It's all one big experiment. I've put tasty fruit trees in the midst of all that color, hiding them among the strong scent and bright color until they are tall enough to avoid the predators themselves.

Meanwhile, call them bee balm or Monarda,  them what you will, the flowerbeds are hugely popular with the pollinators
Picture
Hawkmoth on Monarda
We'll see if they take over the orchard. We'll see if they protect fruit trees. Knock wood, we'll see.
2 Comments

Who Doesn't Want a Pony?

6/22/2021

12 Comments

 
The second most joyful pair of words in the  English language, right after "Free puppies"?  

"Wild pony*"

It's a phrase that seems so exciting, so full of promise, so ripe with potentiality.

​If there is a wild pony in your world, that wild pony could be tamed, right?
Picture
For a couple of months when I was in fifth grade, one of the neighboring horses escaped its field. Even then, the neatly fenced landscape of small dairy farms was sliding away from cultivation. It was possible for a large hoofed mammal like a runaway horse to make itself scarce amidst the uncut brush. It set my imagination on fire. 

* To break the rational universe, yes, the happiest of all combinations in the English language would be the impossible pairing of  "free" + "ponies."
​
But don't be a fool, man, the space-time continuum can't bear the strain...  
​
Full disclosure: I am not alone in this, but I spent a large segment of my younger years absorbed in thoughts of horses. 

Family story says toddler Amy used to make a break for the nearby stable, the feet of my onesie pjs tied together to prevent just such a midnight mission out the window. 

Had we but world enough and time, I could regale you with details about the horses in that stable: Laddie and Pixie, Lady and Shamrock, Daisy and Rex.
Lucky reader, we have NOT world enough or time. But as my skipper recently remarked, "You can take the girl away from the horses, but you can't take the horse out of the girl. 
He was moved to this unusual aphorism by the fact that I had captured a wild pony and led it home to the Would-Be Farm.

Okay, okay, if not technically wild, this pony was wandering without a halter miles from home. In country known to have bears and coyotes.

Pretty much the same thing as a wild pony.


Picture
We were heading down to the river to do some paddling and fishing, four of us convoying our kayaks along a remote stretch of private dirt road when, like a big blue bird of happiness finally coming home to roost, abracadabra! A pony! 
Picture
As someone in a dream, I fed my prize a nibble of apple and rubbed her ears. I whipped up a serviceable halter from the bow line of my sister's kayak and dropped it over the pony's head and commenced the long walk to the Would-Be Farm.

My fishing companions had a variety of reactions. The retired state cop, visibly relieved at someone taking action, drove off saying he'd phone in the missing pony.

My sister echoed my exclamations of "A PONY!"  and took photos.

My sweet spouse suggested that I didn't need to move the animal anywhere. He left the second half of the sentence, "let alone bring it home" unspoken.
I'm not sure how many miles it was from Point A to the Would-Be Farm, but it gave me an opportunity to think about the consequences of my actions.  

Still, when a Pony of Destiny shows up...

It's good to have a conscience, but with a rescued pony, it's far more practical use to possess a corral or a barn to contain the creature while its actual owners are located.

On the walk, I surveyed the neighbors' fields for  an intact fence, a possible stable, or signs of where my diminutive equine buddy might have traveled. 

The former state cop texted with the bad news that no one was missing a pony.  I'd treasured the thought of returning the vagabond to her fond, distraught owners –– possibly by having them meet us on the road with a horse-trailer.

Mr. Linton drove back with bottled water to check on our progress and give us a hand crossing the bridge. 
Picture
Do I need mention that it began to rain?  Or that, once at the Would-Be Farm, the pony ate a snack of grits, drank a bucket of water, took a vigorous roll on the newly cut grass, and trotted off in the direction of the wild back half of the Farm.

The first rule of farming? Right after "If you have livestock, you'll have dead stock," is "Fences first."

There is no comfortable spot to stow a beast of burden at present at the Farm.  I found a longer bit of line and made a more secure halter, and when the pony trotted back –– and toward the road –– I recaptured her.

Making sure she was familiar to the limits of being tied (she had showed a great deal of sensibility and calm on our long walk), I anchored her to a handy tree and ate a belated lunch.
Picture
The consequences of my actions tossed her sweet head and snorted impatiently. She got a hoof over the line and stood balanced on three until I put down my lunch and rescued her.

She snorted and backed with zero dignity into the tenting platform so that she could rub her butt against the edge of the deck.

She took a bite of the evergreen and theatrically rejected it, tossing her thick mane and blowing flecks of green around. She was bored, bored, bored!

It entertaining program, but not a sustainable one.

I laid the options out to my favorite skipper: "One of us will have to drive up the road and ask a neighbor with a corral if we can put the pony there. The other will have to stay and hold the pony's lead." Into the considering silence, I added, "Which one do you want least?"

He elected to hold the pony. The man surprises me. I gave him a pointer or two –– he generally dislikes the whole family of Equus –– and dashed off.

Luckily, there's a messy farmstead up the way with a handful of cattle and horses, plus chickens, and as it turned out, eight sheepdogs.  Beware the dogs indeed.  Standing on the running board, I asked the woman who emerged from the scrum of dogs, "Hey, have you by chance lost a pony?"

She was standing a couple of yards away from the fence inside which a variety of horses and ponies and cows were calmly eating hay. She gestured over her shoulder and said, "Honestly, I don't know. These are my husband's horses."

I thought: and THERE is a successful marriage.

I told her about my wild pony, and she said, "Hmmm, my father-in-law lost a pony last summer." (The youthful horse-crazy kid in me silently fist-pumped at this additional proof that wild pony herds are possible).

Then she said she'd better come take a picture and text it in case it was one of her father-in-law's. 

Yes. It was one of the father-in-law's bunch of horses, she told me. Name of Daisy.  "She's a wanderer," my neighbor said, "Though usually she stays on the other side of the river. It's a long way to walk."

We chatted a bit, and then my neighbor led Daisy away. "I'll bring the rope back," she said.

I sighed and then said to Mr. Linton, "So, you remember that time we went fishing and I caught a wild pony?"  

12 Comments
<<Previous

    About the Blog

    A lot of ground gets covered on this blog -- from sailboat racing to book suggestions to plain old piffle. 

    To narrow the focus, select one of the  Categories below.

    Follow

    Trying to keep track? Follow me on Facebook or Twitter or if you use an aggregator, click the RSS option below.

    RSS Feed

    Old school? Sign up for the newsletter and I'll shoot you a short e-mail when there's something new.

      Newsletter

    Subscribe to Newsletter

    Archives

    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013

    Categories

    All
    Beauty Products
    Big Parks Trip
    Birds
    Boatbuilding
    Books
    Brains
    Contest & Prize
    Dogs
    Everglades Challenge
    Family Stories
    Farming
    Fashion
    Feminism
    Fiction
    Fish
    Flowers
    Flying Scot Sailboat
    Food
    Genealogy
    Handwork
    Health
    History
    Horses
    I
    International Lightning Class
    Mechanical Toys
    Migraine
    Movie References
    Music
    Piffle
    Pigs And Pork
    Poems
    Sailboat Racing
    Sculpture
    Social Media
    Song
    Subconscious Messages And Dream
    Travel
    Wildlife
    Writing

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Me. Me. Me.
  • Publications
  • That 1st Novel
  • More!
  • Contact