THE MARCH OF MUD

It almost looks like it's true - the squeaky wheel does get the grease!  Complain, and someone will do something about it!  My last post was about snow, snow, snow and here I am a week later talking about mud.

We have been enjoying a week's worth of above zero temperatures.  The days have been so warm that the snow that Glen couldn't get to on the roof has been avalanching down onto the deck in sections as the metal roofing warms up enough to let it slide.  The first couple times it happened it freaked the dog right out, but he seems to have it figured out now.  It's not all that unusual to have a brief February thaw, but this one is exceptional - it's been more than a week long and it doesn't even freeze over night.  I tell you, it's weird to lay in bed in the middle of a winter night and listen to the eaves trough running water.

Although there has been a lot of melting going on the snow pack doesn't really look to have shrunk much.  True, the roads are visible, but the ditches are still full.  The ridges left by the snow plows aren't as high as they were last week, but they are still plenty high enough to catch drifting snow should we get some more.  The one good thing about the snow that's left - it is more like solid ice, the wind won't be moving it again.  The long range weather says that we may get some more the first week of March, but that's a long way off and let's hope they are wrong.

Meanwhile I get to deal with pre-spring spring.  March's calling card - mud - has taken over the porch. 

I tell myself, as I stand at the doorway and observe the mess, that it's not as bad as it used to be.  I now only have a husband and a dog to deal with.  There was a time when there were four kids plus the man and at least one dog ... sometimes even a cat ... with all their footprints everywhere and mud splatter up the walls because every one knows it's easier to kick boots off than it is to calmly remove them and place them on a rubber mat like you've been asked to a million times.  It was like they were artists and mud was the medium they liked to work with - splashes, splatters, and globs across the floors and halfway up the walls, all framed beautifully by their wet coats and other clothing carefully arranged on their invisible floor hooks. Ah!  The memories!

But, I digress.

Now I have a larger porch with a lighter coloured floor.  I don't know what I was thinking there, but I'll bet you I didn't make that decision in March.  There are only two humans living here and yet there are six pairs of boots; two neatly on the mat and four others strewn across the floor.  The two on the mat are relatively clean, the others are twice their normal weight with mud, and surrounded by the residue tramped in from outside the last five times they've been worn.  I'm going to wait until this mid-winter thaw is over and then I'm going to gather up all this freshly harvested soil, mix in a little peat moss, and start an early indoor garden.  It's the same threat I've made for the past 34 years.

That's the kind of thinking a girl gets into with spring edging ever closer - I just want to plant some seeds and watch things grow.

                                                      MAROONED

 It's got to the point where we no longer take it for granted that we can go to town any old time we please.  Just owning a truck and SUV, both in good repair and sporting suitable tires, or having a worthy grid road system going right past our place means very little when the snow is this deep and a restless prairie wind continually sifts it sideways into drifts.  I told you about our New Year's Eve walk?  Conditions haven't changed for the better.

I'm not going to compare our situation to what Atlantic Canada is getting at the moment.  They measure their snow fall in feet, not inches, and the winds that accompany their storms range in the 80 to 100 kph; it's a very rare prairie storm that will pack that kind of a wallop.  Their storms are massive, alright, but snow they get in December doesn't tend to be still sticking around in March.  On the prairies we keep ours around.  Our temperatures don't melt it.  Our only option is to pile it up - pushing it as far back from our driveway as possible because we know that there will be many more storms and we will need the space to push those snowfalls back too.

Meanwhile the winds play with the white stuff.  With every shift in direction the snow banks form different designs across the landscape.  It's really quite beautiful to watch and with the right play of sun and shadow, photographers can capture exquisite scenes.  If you are a nature watcher you would love it.  If you want to go to town, you might not be so impressed.

For example: yesterday morning I had decided to go to church.  No one had been out of the yard for 24 hours and the wind had been blowing the whole time from the west so I was pretty suspicious of our main gate out.  I backed out of the garage and played eeny meeny miney mo and decided to try the escape route instead.  Our yard has what my husband calls the 'bunny hole' referring to a back door escape hatch that rabbit holes have.  It leaves going south whereas the main gate faces west; depending on which way the wind is blowing from, if one is blocked the other one is probably passible.

It was tricky, but I made it out of the yard ... and was feeling quite accomplished until I got to the corner a mile from home and found the intersection almost completely filled in with drifted snow.  I debated my chances and decided to go for it - if I got stuck there it was only a mile walk home and I had brought my walking boots just in case.  I made it through but more than once during the church service I found myself wondering if I was going to be lucky enough to get home again.  I did, but when Glen came home six hours later in his big 4 wheel drive truck he said it was all he could do to get through.  When I mentioned this morning that I had a meeting in town tonight he just said he didn't know how I was going to get there.  I had forgotten we were marooned.

I have letters written by my grandmother before I was born talking about being totally snow locked by March one year because the route they used to get to main roads from their farm had blown in so solidly they had to wait for spring melt to be set free.  My father-in-law also tells the story of how when their first child was born Jan 30, 1945, the trip to the hospital was the last trip down highway 8 until spring.  In this day and age it seems unbelievable that a major highway would be shut down for months but I have no doubt his story is true.

It's mid February and quite often March is our snowiest month.  Anywhere (and there are lots of places) that the snow has blocked the roads the plows leave ridges when they pass.  Anywhere there are ridges the snow fills in even faster and harder the next time it blows.  These next six weeks could be interesting.

                                                           ANTICIPATION

"I've never lost a crop in February yet!"

For those in the non farming field this statement probably causes some head scratching.  And, for those who are, you would recognise this as a statement of pure optimism.

The non farmers would say "Of course the crop isn't lost yet.  It's not even planted yet!"

The farmers among us would smile knowing smiles, nod their heads, and hope for the best.

The non farmers think 'farming season' only lasts from May to September.

Farmers are well aware that a true farming season never takes a break.  It's a year round application of work and weather, money and machinery.  In order to make a living at it, all of these things have to come together at the right time.  It's not like a 9 to 5 job, and it's really no wonder why the 9 to 5ers of the world don't understand.

A couple weeks ago a neighbour was over for coffee and at some point in the conversation said "I've never lost a crop in February yet!"  To put it in context, he and my husband had been talking about the huge amount of snow we've had so far this winter, and what that was going to mean in the spring, depending on how fast the melt would happen.  Both men are concerned at how seeding is going to be affected come spring.  The ground was saturated by rains throughout October and November last year and with all the snow piled on top of that they know that even if it doesn't snow another flake or rain another drop the land is going to be so muddy that a) the machinery will be stuck a lot,            and b) many acres will either be under water or unreachable.  When time and landbase are so closely connected to their bottom line, these are serious circumstances.

And yet, his statement wasn't a "woe is me!".  On the contrary, it was stated with hope and optimism for the future.  He wasn't throwing in the towel and saying "There's no use even trying."  It was much more like "It ain't over till the fat lady sings." Both men knew that the challenges were likely to be high and the work hard, but worrying about it in February was a waste of their time and energy.  A lot of things could happen before the ground was warm enough to plant, and maybe, just maybe, some of them would be in their favour.

Winter is wearing on us all, though.  It gets like that in mid February.  We all long for warmer weather, more daylight hours, and the colour green.  In another couple weeks we'll be starting to look out for returning birds - crows are usually the first - and we'll breathe a sigh of relief; spring will be just around the corner. 

We are an optimistic people: we wouldn't live here, or do this, if we weren't.

                                             THINKING GLOBAL

I'm a news junky, even though the habit is detrimental to my sleep patterns.  I need to know what's going on.  I want to be informed although I seriously wonder why when the information gained by listening to the news is so confusing and/or infuriating. 

It's not that this specific period of history has worse stories than other times have had.  The earliest monster bad news story that I can remember was the Cuban missile crisis. I was only six at the time so obviously I didn't understand anything about it except that my parents were frightened, but believe me, something that scares your parents that much it absolutely terrifies a kid.

I also remember my Grade 3 teacher telling us the US president had been shot dead, and the night that my favourite radio station turned off the music and would talk only of a guy named Martin Luther King, someone I had never heard of but when I asked mom she knew, and again a news story had the power to upset her.

Back then it felt like, being Canadian, we lived outside the danger zone that America seemed to occupy.  For sure the border was only 40 miles away, but there was this imaginary line there that said we were a different people.  You only had to look at a globe - there was that 49th parallel separating us; below it they were some serious kind of colour like slate blue or money green, and above it we were pink; Canada was usually pink.

Time went on.  Jet travel pulled the planet into an ever-tightening ball of business dealings, tourist travels, and unfortunately, foreign government meddling.  None of these things were new to the human experience, but now there were no bounds of 'too far away'.  Nothing brought this home to me more than 9/11.  Up until that beautiful September morning - if I had thought about it all, which I didn't - I would have said that North America was protected by enormous distance and huge oceans from the ugliness that was happening in the Middle East.  As we all discovered that day, our planet is much too small for that kind of thinking. 

The World Health Organization warns us all the time; with the human population in constant motion as it is, a disease hatched in any region of the world can infect us all within mere days.  One wishes that the same level of vigilance could be put on the diseases called Hate and Intolerance, because they spread just as fast having no more respect for those imaginary border lines between countries than any other deadly pathogens.

Violence and carnage against innocent people are perpetuated every day; the news overflows with it.  Fanned by greed and false feelings of superiority the flames of destruction wipe out concert goers, market shoppers, holidayers, babies, children, men and women alike.  The intent seems to always be to make to next massacre more shocking than the last.  On one level the evil that is out there is winning - the body count continues to go up - but on the other hand it is too much to take in.  The shock and awe tactic is losing its edge.  It's not a case if "will it happen again?" but "where will it happen next?"

So, this latest time it was Canada's turn - innocent men at prayers.  No reason at all, just a young man with his head full of poisonous beliefs, his soul drained of humanity.

As I sat and digested the story I felt shame that my reaction to it lacked intensity.  Where was the emotion that Paris or Nice had stirred up in me?  And all the others before them?  I should be twice as mad that my country was now having to deal with the horror, but I wasn't.  Was I becoming immune to the violence?  Was it my human response to overload?

At the end of that newscast was the image of the Eifel Tower going dark in respect of those lost in the tragedy in a mosque in Quebec City.  This quiet, powerful, beautiful statement said to me "We are all one" and something shifted in my thinking.  It wasn't that I was becoming immune to the hatred.  And I am a proud Canadian, but I realized I was not counting lives lost on our soil any more important than those lost elsewhere.  The words "we are all in this together" is what France's gesture of respect was saying, and I understood it was how I was feeling too.  Imaginary lines and distance mean nothing in today's world. 

Today's globes aren't the multi-coloured jig saw puzzles of my youth.  Instead they depict what the planet really looks like - the water is blue, the land is either lush and green or brown with drought, less and less of it is white with ice and snow.  We cannot afford thinking that says we are in any way removed from what goes on somewhere else - or to continue to nourish hate with more talk of hate. 

I shut the news off this morning; I need a break.

                                                         GOTCHA DAY

When the occasion arises to describe the family I grew up in my standard line is usually "There were seven of us; six girls and one boy - and we had to cheat to get him!"

That's right, after five little girls mom and dad were unwilling to roll the 'let Nature take its course' dice again and decided to adopt that little boy they wanted to round out their family.  That little girl #6 came along shortly afterward can be chalked up to Mother Nature showing them who was really in charge of such matters.  She has a great sense of humour, Mother Nature does.

I was only nine years old when we started hearing the word "adoption".  Mom and dad had to go for meetings and they went to visit some people in town whose whole family was adopted, I imagine to talk to them about what to expect.  From the fringes where I was observing all this, there was a lot to take in and as I remember it, by the way the grownups treated the word "adopted" it seemed that maybe this was something too far outside the box for our family.  As an adult I now realize that this seriousness that my parents treated the process with was commitment, not anguish - although all parenting involves plenty of both.

I honestly couldn't tell you how long it took between when they applied and the day when they announced that they were off to Regina to pick up a little boy who was going to be our brother.  I wonder?  Did I believe that it was really happening?  How did my school day go?  I can't even recall if they were home before us, or the other way around, but I do remember how cute that dark-haired, brown-eyed boy was, and how all of his new sisters just fell in love with him.

On January 20, 1965 - his Gotcha day (the day we 'got' him) he was a chubby-faced. sturdy toddler with a little one-sided grin that we all marvelled was just like Elvis Presley's.  That mom and dad had chosen a name for him that gave him the same initials (E.P.) seemed like Fate - he was just that darned cute.  There were so many of us crowding in on him that it's a wonder he wasn't traumatised, maybe mom held us all back, but he had us figured as his own personal groupie section in no time at all.  He was spoiled shamelessly.

Until, of course, that little sister #6 came along and he had to share the lime light.

For people who have no experience with adoption, who have never stretched their families in such a way, it's probably hard to understand how you can graft a new branch on the family tree and have it take so completely, but he is our brother; always has been, always will be.

With our gain though, it has to be acknowledged that someone else had to suffer his loss.  I keep these unknown people - his mother especially - in the back of my mind.  We know very little about them, but it's not the financial or social facts that matter anyway.  It's the times that we've shared that they haven't.  It's the sense of humour that they gave him but it's us who get to laugh with him (or at him, as the case may be).  When his birthday rolls around do they stop and wonder where he is; I know I would if I were them.

I'm not sure which came first - the chicken, or the egg; are we the kind of people who are just open and therefore tend to adopt, or did my brother's adoption open a door for us making it an easy decision to go ahead and adopt again?  Regardless, two of my eight grandchildren are adopted as well, and with the arrival of the last one came the concept of having a Gotcha day to celebrate when he joined the family.

It's such a lovely tradition and so simple an idea I don't know why we didn't think of it before.  My brother is in his fifties now and as far as I can remember, has never had his big day acknowledged.  That was changed this year when sister #6 planned dinner and a celebratory cake Friday night and the rest of us were there in spirit to celebrate too.  We're still glad we "gotcha"!

                                                               A BOWL OF SOUP

The past two weeks have been a whirlwind.  What would normally have been 'the dead of winter' with no activities and a lot of staying at home and keeping warm was anything but for the first two weeks of January.

The first mission of the year actually sent out a warning just before Christmas, but its message wasn't interpreted correctly.  Our daughter and her husband are the recent new owners of an acreage about an hour's drive from here.  It's 22 acres with a house, two barns, a workshop and a huge shed in a well treed yard; the perfect place to raise their growing family.  It's wonderful to have that kind of space and control of what you want to do with it, as opposed to living in a city setting with architectural control and animal bylaws in place.  Of course, there is a trade off for these freedoms: where as no one is going to tell you how to design your house or what kind of animals you can keep, when you have water and sewer problems - they are entirely your own problem to fix.

When their water pressure started giving them problems it was misdiagnosed to be a foot valve problem and that repair was made; it made no difference.  Then came Christmas and then the blizzard and then the yard clearing which led to the discovery of a growing ice pond forming in their front yard - they obviously had a water line break between the well and the house.  It was New Year's Eve and the next three days would be weekend and holiday - they needed to deduce where the break was, dig down to find it, repair the line, and properly re-bury the line so the frost couldn't get at it and freeze it solid.

On the good side they have their own backhoe to do the digging and our son works at a store that carried the plumbing pieces they would need so the holidays weren't going to stop them, on the other hand it was bitterly cold and if we were going to be able to help them it had to be right away - we had booked a week in Mexico and had to be gone to catch our flight by the morning of the 4th, at the latest.

The men gave it everything they had but the little backhoe just didn't have the power to get through the layer of frost.  The break ended up being under where their driveway is and the more ground is compressed with traffic the deeper the frost layer gets.  They finally had to call a neighbour to come with a bigger machine and six hours later it was dug up, fixed, and buried again - all for an inch long split in a plastic hose!  We heard about this in a text about the time we were halfway to Calgary; it was good to know they had their water back.

The tropical holiday was lovely and warm, the beach and pool at the resort were great, we went with fun people and met more while we were there ... and I fought a cold the whole time.  And just as I began to get better Glen came down with it.  We were invited to stay longer and visit more when we got back to Canada but all we wanted by that time was to go home - besides, no one in their right mind would seriously want to share space with our germs.

I think we were in bed within an hour of getting home on Friday night.

And yesterday I got up and made soup.  After all the tropical fruit, fresh fish dishes, and fancy cuisine we had all last week all either of us desired was a pot of hot, meal-worthy, vegetable-filled soup.  Be it ever so humble, there is no place like home.

                                                           WE'VE GOT THIS!

A person always wonders what the future holds as the final minutes of one year steadily tick forward into the first minutes of the next.  We think about the year that has been and what we hope for as the next one unfolds, and being a superstitious bunch, we look for signs to calm our reservations with the unknown.  It's always scary to step into something we can't predict.

This past year has been a doozey, hasn't it?  News broadcasts are a never ending flow of stories that leave us at the very least unsettled, and at worst, deeply depressed.  How can human beings think that blowing up other human beings serves any purpose at all?  How can bombing whole cities into rubble and dust profit any kind of agenda?  What is the point of declaring yourself the victor when there is nothing left to claim, and no people to rule? 

Disturbingly I find myself becoming immune to the stories of terrorism attacks around the world.  It's not a question of was there another one, but where did it happen today, with minor points of interest added like how many bombers there were, how many of them got away, and how many innocent shoppers or concert goers died this time.  It has started sounding like a sports cast explaining who the opposing teams are, what plays were used, and what was the final score.  What should shock us just ends up sounding like a bunch of statistics.  I have to stop and remind myself every once in a while those numbers had mothers and fathers who loved them, children who depended on them, friends who were probably there and couldn't save them.

And no one will ever be able to think of 2016 without the nightmare of the USA presidential election results.  If there ever was a reason to dread this next four years, it's the thought of who is in charge at the White House.  My hope is that we manage to live through it; the world has never been in less trust-worthy hands.

But that is the big picture; something I can do nothing about.  If I let myself worry about the world affairs I will certainly go crazy, so I focus on just my own little place on the map and my own little life.  When the clock ticked into 2017 we were up at the neighbour's place toasting the New Year with loads of food, cups of cheer, and a box of fireworks set off amid snowflakes fluttering down around us.  A half hour later we were on our way home, happy and tired.  The roads hadn't been in great shape on our trip to the party and they had got worse.  We ended up getting stuck a mile from home in the middle of the road because the drifts were so deep and went on for so long. 

The obvious thought that this was a bad omen for the new year came to mind as we put on the extra hats, mitts, and scarves we had in the back seat, put the cell phone on flashlight mode and headed home, but that mile's worth of exercise gave me lots of time to think - yes getting stuck wasn't a good thing, but since we were prepared and confident in our abilities, it wasn't a serious obstacle.

The walk was brisk, but pretty, the tractor started right up even though it hadn't been plugged in, and we were changed into work clothes and headed back to the car in less that a half hour.  We had the tools to dig out and Glen used the snow blower on the tractor to clear the whole road and our driveway before we called it a day.  For me it wasn't about the misfortune of getting stuck, but that we were capable of overcoming the trouble all on our own.

Let's hope we can say the same thing about world affairs and American politics this time next year.