10:40 a.m.
What a racket! The house is surrounded by birds. I opened the window to have a better listen, wondering if there was a flock of geese in the field right next to the road. But no, it’s a flock of blackbirds that has taken over the trees all around our house, and they are singing up a storm.

When I came upstairs this morning and glanced out the window, I saw snow on the branches. It is all melted now, but two hours ago it was beginning to cover everything. Emil would not heed my advice to take a warmer jacket, and left wearing his spring windbreaker.

I left peeled potatoes in a pot of water on the stove, and a cooked roast in the turned-off oven, and went with Scott at suppertime to buy a calf near Perigord.

We went cross-country and had to turn around twice and retrace our route. But it was a pleasant drive. We got up into hillier country, but where the farmers have decimated the trees even more than they have around here. There are virtually no trees at all on many fields. The land is flat and there are no stones, and Scott says the topsoil is rich and deep, but now there are no trees. It’s horrible to see.

Then it got hilly and every road curved and dipped. Very pretty.

That black cow has been scratching against a tree at the end of our driveway all morning. She must have a hell of an itch. She is there again, alone. She’s the one that was scratching so determinedly on the tractor tire rim the other day, too.

2:41 pm
I have gotten caught up in the kitchen, making bread, washing dishes, sweeping the floor, prepping for lentil chili and a spaghetti-sausage casserole, listening to a call-in show on the radio about non-pesticide-treated healthy lawns.

4:04 p.m.
I must get out of this f’ing kitchen!! It has gotten hot now, and I feel clammy all over, and like I have been cooking all day. I guess I have.

These sandhill cranes were beside the road when we went to Wynyard to buy organic wholewheat flour the other day. And my, does that flour make beautiful, tasty bread. I’ve outdone myself with this batch.

Don’t you wish I had a more fancy camera? I do.

~ set 'em up, knock 'em down ~

9:14 a.m. Everett is in his room with the door closed. “I’m doing art for Mother’s Day,” he told me.

11:17 a.m. A young calf died. They examined (don’t ask for these details, I guarantee you don’t want to hear them) it and found a broken rib and likely a punctured lung. Calves sometimes get stepped on or bunted hard when they are out in the corrals with the other cattle.

Its mother is mooning around, looking for her baby, calling it. “Come out and help me comfort her,” Scott said to me last night. He has been phoning all over the country trying to find an orphan to “put on her.” We may have had some luck this morning, I’m not sure yet.

~ handy round scratching post ~

I offered to wait 10 minutes for a water trough to fill, and then shut it off, so that he could go on to other things without worrying about forgetting the tap. I had to scrape through a barbwire fence. Picking up a big stick made me feel safer. I pressed it down on the bottom wire of a second fence I nearly tripped over first. That was the electric one; I’ve yet to have a jolt.

The trough was only half full when I got there, so I stood in a calm corner out of the cool breeze for a while. A young Black Angus was the first to approach me, timidly, yet I was more chickenshit.

I walked away, around the old tractor tire rim (probably incorrect terminology, but you don’t know that, right?), keeping the rusty junk between me and the heavy beast. I was nervous, stick or no stick.

Then more of them had to come and check me out. I offer you here, exhibit one, the stick, which if I waved it around made them back off a step, but if I stood still with one of its ends in my hand and the other on the ground, they’d come up and scratch themselves against, bold as you please.

I am glad these yearlings are just as afraid of me as I am of them. One quick move on my part and they’d be off and running. On the other hand, look at the size of them in comparison to me! But of course, all their predators are smaller than they are, and I am a predator even though I forget that from time to time. They are smart to be wary. I've got beef in my belly and leather on my feet. It doesn’t stop them from sniffing my clothing and licking at it with their massive pink tongues.

Look at the size of that schnozz!

1:50 p.m.

The kid’s still in there, still drawing and cutting and glueing.

I meant no more cow pictures after today.

Blackie, the mother cat, watched Everett hand them out to me one at a time, and there are five, not four. The fifth is fully one-half the size of any of the others. That's it on the left.

Scott and his brother have been midwifing new calves today. Which means they've been "pulling" them.
 

Mm, yum.

~ what a plough wind can do. keep in mind that these
bins are not made of tin foil, but heavy steel ~

9:29 a.m.

Up since 7:30, at the computer but for going to the table to eat breakfast after Scott made it. He’s gone shingling and Everett has just come in, after walking to the bus with Emil at 8 o’clock, to tell me he’s found the newborn kittens.

It was yesterday that he came to me to say that Blackie must have given birth because she is now skinny, and I told him to follow her around until she went back to her litter. So he has come in quite excited. There are four — two look like Skipper, his favoured first kitten who is now the young studly about the barnyard — and he says “At first I thought Blackie had a mouse collection, they are so small!”

The kittens are in a bale house up in the barn loft, and I have been asked not to tell anyone because Everett is worried the smaller kids might be too rough with them. He is still talking about how they are sucking, snuggled up right next to their mom, and so on and so forth. He’ll be taking me out to have a look later today.

I started running my bath a few minutes ago but stopped the water in order to come here and write. You’d think I had something pressing to say. I’ve been reading Writing as a Way of Healing by Louise DeSalvo, and she talks about using your writing for personal growth. Writing as I do, however, may not be what she has in mind.

Writing that helps us work out emotional issues we have is writing that challenges the writer not only to describe painful events and the resulting feelings explicitly, but to write about them in some sort of creative way. The kind of writing I do describes situations and my current responses, but is not a challenge -- except maybe for the struggle to articulate clearly, sometimes. But I am not creative about it, I just write it down, plain and simple. Just get it out. Just record.

Well, DeSalvo is saying a lot of stuff. First it was writing about traumatic events of one’s past, now it is characters and plot and imagery, goal setting and planning. Good stuff, but making me realize that I don’t challenge myself with my writing. I just let it spill onto the page, pretty much. You can actually see this in my diary handwriting, if you look. It usually has an even, smooth flow, with virtually no crossouts or scribbles, as if I am extremely clear-minded and sure of myself and steamrolling right over the paper, page after page in one sitting.

Hesitation is rare, though I do sometimes have to stop and think about how to write something down true to my memory. I have to re-remember it in mental film before continuing.

Now back to that warm enamel bed.

Shelly, you were wondering what the inside of an all-fridge looks like? Here you go.

10:46 a.m.

Several days ago the feeders were running around in the pasture, chased by Ivan and Bruce. I found out later, when I stopped to talk to Ivan in the farmyard, that they were trying to herd one into the stock trailer. Ivan was on his way to take the animal to be butchered. Fool me, I hopped up on the fender to look in at it. Why? I don’t know. In case it was one I would recognize or something.

It was laying down quite comfy, relaxed, and looked at me with its pretty cow-eyes (though okay it was probably a steer), and my heart started to hurt, thinking about what was going to happen to it in a few hours or sooner. Oh yes it will probably be painless and the beast will have no time for fear, but it still seems to me ... terrible.

And yet, I dig two one-pound packages of hamburger out of the deep freeze in the garage later that day, and a beef roast, and carry them across the yard to put into storage in our house where they’ll be handy for thawing and cooking. I’ve somehow made the disconnect that allows me to live below my personal ideals of vegetarianism and non-violence.

This little fox was about 50 feet away when it finally noticed Everett and I sitting on some rocks, nibbling on potato chips, yesterday afternoon. As soon as we were spotted, it ran off in the other direction.

And in the evening when I went out on my own, I was irresistably drawn toward the ditch next to the neighbour's driveway. The frogs make so much noise it seems to come from all directions, so I headed for the closest water. Though there was the slanting light from the setting sun, there was also a light sprinkling of rain, and when I turned back to walk home, there was a rainbow against the dark sky.

This morning the cattle romped through the pasture across from our driveway, kicking their feet in the air. They seemed irresistably drawn to a small manure pile, to meet the hard heads of their opponents in the game of push and shove. The action drew me outdoors, where the air today is warm and spring-scented.

I walked around the house, looking at the flower beds I made last year. Along the east side, a row of delphiniums is up, their frothy leaves the colour of new lettuce. The virginia creeper vines have begun to redden and bud, and the scarlet daylily’s spikes are showing signs of life. I raked off some dead stems and, as each year I do, dug in with my bare hands and got stabbed by dead thistly stems because I didn’t plan to do this now and left my garden gloves in the house.

Everett can burp really loud and long. On our walk I told him it is starting to be annoying, it sounds rude, and that I want him to do it with his mouth closed if he must do it at all.

It’s suppertime, and he’s slicing bread to put a roasted wiener into. Zander is watching, and Everett favours him with a long burp, mouth closed.

“How do you do that?” Zander says, awed.

“I don’t know,” replies Everett. “It’s a gift, I guess.”

2 p.m.

There are very few times when one can see this little windmill thing totally still, but it happened the other evening as I was picking my way past the dugout, so I had to take a picture.

Since then, we’ve had gale-force winds. They usually die down a bit after supper, but lately we aren’t even that lucky. A walk requires both neck and ear coverings and a warm jacket.

I’m just about to go out for an afternoon stroll, for a change. Tonight I am invited to my sister’s for a clothing party, and although I don’t need one more item of clothing in my already overcrowded dresser and closet, I like clothes and always welcome new things to wear. I quickly tire of the same old, same old.

The weekend:

Well, it was nice to have Cathy here. I booted the boys out of their bedroom so she could have a relatively comfortable mattress and some privacy, and they slept on the living-room floor in their sleeping bags. Emil complained a bit because he has a hard time adjusting to even the most minor of changes, but they both slept well and looked so cute lined up on the carpet in their sleeping bags like giant larvae.

The workshops we attended on Saturday included lots of drumming, and I enjoyed that while Cathy found it more distracting than helpful when it comes to meditation. I tended to focus in on the sound itself and to feel it move me. I would like to get my own drum, now.

I can’t say I learned anything about meditating or contacting my spirit guides. I was a bit disappointed, because I always hope for some profound new insight or inspiration. But then, that's not really what the workshop was offering. For me the more important aspect may well have been the experience of being part of the group of lovely women who were there.

It sounds pompous as hell when I say I know how to meditate and contact my spirit guides, and that no one has taught me anything new in that respect for quite a few years! But I think I don’t really need new techniques anyway. What I need is the focus and energy to make use of the tools I already possess. No teacher can give that to me. I have to pull it up out of myself.

I could take workshops till the cows come home, but the value that results is not from the workshops themselves, it's gained by taking the abilities home and making good use of them.

What I need to do is practise what I already know in a more determined manner. I don’t have a daily spiritual practice or ritual beyond simply remembering as often as possible throughout the day to be still and to appreciate my good fortune in this moment.

I did enjoy a couple wonderful “journeys,” one guided and one not. I’ll write them down sometime.

Yesterday after Cathy left I went with my sister and Scott’s mom to see Connie Kaldor perform. She made all of us laugh quite a bit, mixed in with the good music of course. You could tell she really knows Saskatchewan people and the culture here.

Right now, Everett is mixing the dry ingredients for a double batch of bran muffins before we go outside. I was just out chopping wood for kindling and the wind feels a bit warmer today, although once we get out on the road we’ll probably freeze our faces off. Oh well.

Between the two of us, Everett and I almostly completely decimated this hot loaf of bread after it came out of the oven.

Seriously, how many jobs are there where you can sip on a glass of red wine at your desk? Not too many, but I am fortunate enough to have one. Of course, I have to sip pretty slow and only have one glass, but still! It seemed like quite a luxury when I did it yesterday.

We ended up running into town earlier than planned because Scott needed some roofing tools delivered. Naturally I forgot the grocery list I had so painstakingly made the night before. Still managed to run up a food bill of more than $125, though, so all was not lost. A few items were forgotten and there wasn’t time to organize the recycling and take it along, so we’ll go in again later today too, when I finish work.

Meanwhile, Everett is at the kitchen table working on his math.

I am expecting a fair companion this evening. Cathy is driving out from the city to attend two workshops with me tomorrow over at Scott’s aunt’s place. We are packing them into one day. The other participants are members of the group of friends I call the Likeminded Ladies, who get together to share life stories and talk about subjects they are somewhat reticent about in less familiar company.

The following is from the workshop instructor’s website, Deerhorn Shamanics:

Shamanic Journey Level I
Learn the ancient art of Shamanic Journeying and how to utilize this practice ethically to better connect with and understand the self, as well as the many messages we receive from the environment and the spirit world on a daily basis. 

Power Animal
Through the technique of Shamanic Journeying, learn how to connect with your animal spirit guides, how to communicate and how to receive their sacred messages.