To be fair, it's mostly my favorite skipper who is finding things... because he is looking.

I am meanwhile mostly playing with my electronic screen of paper dolls. Or staring moodily into the near distance while thinking about what misery my little paper people are going to endure next.

But Jeff? Less moody and more duty.  While using a manual post-hole digger last week, himself was contemplatively lifting and thunking the tool when he heard a non-dirt noise.  It sounded a bit too musical to be a rock, though we are amply supplied with rocks at the Would-Be Farm. He gingerly applied fingers and Little Jack Hornered a beefy chunk of glass from the clay.

When I saw it at first, I thought it might be antique automotive glass, but thank you Google, it turns out to be a honking piece of an orange drink jug from 1927-1937.
https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/1927-35-nesbitts-orange-soda-jug-3880547348

I wonder how long it's been rusticating in this former cow pasture? Nearly 100 years? Did it slide down from the midden pile behind the old farmhouse?

 The midden pile.  Or, if you like, call it a trash heap, but I like the archeological flavor of "midden."  

And archeologically/anthropologically speaking, nearly every farm from before the middle of the 20th C usually had its very own spot for trash. Just like the Mesopotamians, chucking used plates and broken furniture over the edge of a rise. Out of sight, out of mind. 

A few years ago, I uncovered a treasure-trove of unbroken glass bottles that had somehow survived first the pitch out of the old farmhouse back door, second the minefield of granite chunks and previously pitched items, and third the 20, 30, 40 winters between then and now.  ​

Each year, I worry about pollinators showing up for the many feral apple trees, and for the handful of sturdy fruit that have survived our custodianship (looking at you, pear trees!).

Buds will start to swell, and the hint of green will return to the putty-colored fields.  Bluebirds and bright goldfinches will look like confetti scattered in the wind. These and less crayon-ish birds will be making a racket earlier and earlier in the morning. ​

 Then maybe spring peepers will start up, along with the excited hooting of barred owls and the good-lord-that's-annoying-after-the-first-three-times sound of the whip-o-will.

This spring, everything seemed telescoped into a couple of weeks. By the time we migrated south for our annual pilgrimage to the Florida Keys (fishing! friends! regatta!), new leaves the color of radiator fluid stippled the woods.

Like an inverted dance of the seven veils: the naked rock bones and tree trunks covered by swirling layers of buds, blossom, tiny leaves, bigger leaves, a variegated canopy, dressing rather than undressing. 

Though, naturally, we hope not to begin (or end) with someone's head on a platter. 

I'm fond of the Progressive ads in which Dr. Rick attempts to keep young homeowners from turning into their parents.

They are subversive and sometimes thrum home like an arrow hitting the bullseye.  

But really, blue hair!

This fall, however, I heard that opossums will fluoresce pink. 

It sounded cool, and since the Would-Be Farm comes very well supplied with possums, it was the work of one evening to track one of the dear creatures down and bother it with light.  

My experiment says: possums show pink-ISH anyhow.

Then, because everything looks like a nail when you're holding a hammer, I went in search of other creatures to flash. 

Enter the porcupine.

Blue hair. We all see it.  ​

While perambulating recently, I was stopped in my tracks by the oddest, most erudite of graffiti.

Strictly speaking, since the message was not written by hand (graph-itti) it might be called a poster or one of those bills nobody wants others to post. Whatever the actual medium, when slapped onto a garage door, the message is both mysterious and unsettling.

A citizen in the 21st Century, I turned immediately to the inter webs. 

I will not deny that my first thought was that it was some sort of political code. And perhaps it is...one that might encourage deescalation. I mean, really: people are CHEERING that an 82-year-old got his head bashed in by a home intruder?

Well anyhoo, the formula I known as Euler's Identity. Which sounds like a spy story, but that name is pronounced "Oiler's". So, less international-operative let us say, and more rogue garage-mechanical. 

And, she re-phrased with laser-like focus, it's commonly considered the most beautiful of mathematical equations.  (I wonder if they have an annual contest with capes and crowns and airbrushed tans).  

​It's been likened to a Shakespearean sonnet, and my favorite starry-eyed quote about the formula is that it "is absolutely paradoxical; we cannot understand it and we don't know what it means, but we have proved it and it must be the truth."  

But wait, she said plaintively, what the Euler's identity DO in the world? Short answer: math stuff that I cannot, for the life of me and the love of light, manage to keep herded up in my brain for long enough to summarize. Dang. We REALLY don't know what it means.

Ah, but wait. Plot thickens: there's Euler's Identity, Euler's Constant, Euler's Four-Square Identity (okay, check this shiznit: double the sum of 4 squared numbers and the result can be expressed as the sum of four squares whaaaaa),  Euler's Number,  Euler's other Number (a cavitation number in fluid dynamics), and Euler's Theory, and, Holy Bologna on a pony –– Euler's Lucky Numbers. Which are, btw, a series of prime numbers that, well, geek.  

​Ooh! electronic music based on it can be seen here.

 

I guess so.

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.

They have cheekbones to die for.

Some trot. 

Or caper.

Others preen and strut.

Some amble, even.

Many –– so many! –– are ready for their close-up, Mr. deMille. 

​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.

​

Which love language is this again?

Foodies have "amuse-bouche." Readers have flash fiction. Writers make up little stories about whatever comes to hand. 

She wasn't Betty Boop, not exactly, though that unsettling glint in her eye suggested she warn't no Campbell Soup kid. 

She'd maintained an over-the-shoulder flirtation with any old observant gaze for –– let me count this out –– more than 75 years. Didn't a glamorous little thing like her just get tired of her role? Didn't she want to shake out her hair, shrug those shoulders square, and frown from time to time?  

At least she was out of the closet. Nobody likes to spend a lifetime –– a literal lifetime, if you do the depressing math –– holding on in the dark.  And whether she was the vivacious creature she appeared, or if, like Jessica Rabbit, she was just painted that way, that face made it harder to shut a bifold door.

So she there she hung in the window. Peeping. A coquette such as she must peep, surely. With that coy, art-deco fan of cloth –– a peignoir draped over her shoulder, I think with matching wee mirabou mules on her off-screen baby feet. 

Maybe seven decades gave a gal perspective along with a few chips and pallor.  She might have burned as wooden matches, or splintered as a chair polished by generations of school-children's sit-upons. She could have backed a mirror or a dresser drawer. She might have moldered in an attic or ended in a bin.

Instead, she waited liminal, looking in. A few characterless companions for company. The time passes.  
​

The laundromat: a hotbed of outrage.

Maybe it's a North Country thing, this expression of grievances. Every day is Festivus and they have a problem with you people. 

I've resisted the impulse to post the rather frequent road-side rants –– partly because I have very little access to the web, but also because it seems so unkind to broadcast these beefs or private tragedies any farther.

The farm with the big hand-lettered sign about the "Careless Driver who Ran over our Dog..." or the beautifully manicured lawn with the sign: "Community Propane SUCKS!!!!" or, the one I can't quite read and am afraid to stop for a photo or a closer look, which starts "This is NOT a parking Lot! It's Private Property..." and ends with "Now get OFF my PROPERTY."

I visited Saratoga Springs as a 15-year-old on a 4-H trip of some stripe. I suppose it had to do with Horse Bowl or another equine-related activity. It was meant to be a treat, spending the day at this classic horse-racing center.

​I don't remember how we got there, or why we were sitting in a dining room listening to some adult talk about something or another. For seemingly eternity.

But what I do remember, with vivid, visceral detail? The sensation of the tiny packet of catsup between my restless fingers. I flipped that packet between my fingers the way a magician moves a coin from knuckle to knuckle. It had a particular squeezy resistance to pressure when I flexed a fist.

And then it didn't.

A small packet of catsup, I have every recollection, can be propelled by hand to a distance of two banquet tables.

The teaspoon of tomato-based condiment can, demonstrably, touch base with at least five innocent bystanders. And for the remainder of that day in Saratoga Springs was divided into thirds: first third: horror and mortification. Second third: silent apology. Third third: suppressed hysteria.

I competed in a horse show at Skidmore College when I was in college. I don't remember anything about the horse I rode, or how I performed, but I can recall exactly the swoop and sway of the car on its way. The upperclassman driving us in his car talked to his audience of student sardines with liberal use of both hands, regardless the conditions of the road.

This time, the trip Saratoga Springs was just delightful. 

A pleasant drive. The Saratoga Lake Yacht Club welcomed us with extraordinary warmness, our visit to the racetrack was unmarred by condiment incident, and we came home with the sailing equivalent of blue ribbons...

​