Small things...

Sometimes I have trouble coming up with things to write about in the winter. The days seem much the same... short, dark and cold. I don't mind this in the way that many people do, but I often feel that I lack things of interest to write about.  The last few days have been particularly cold, and that makes me worry about my animals. And a worried mind does not lend itself towards creative writing tasks well. However, several people have asked me to come up with a post, and that encouraged me enough to propel me into looking through my pictures of the last week to see what I had that might be compelling enough to share.

The first is an antique store find. I have an antique dressing table where I put my make up on (Chris calls this, "Gilding the lily.")  and try to beat my hair into submission each morning. I had a small, tilt top mirror that was very useful but jarringly modern looking. It just didn't go with the antique it sat upon.  Last weekend we poked around a wonderful antique store, and Rachel spied this gem.

  And at under $20 it was a steal! It's silver plated, and was pretty grungy, but I polished it up a bit and voila... my dressing table is now more pleasing. 

Sometimes I catch of glimpse of something so surreal that I wander about the rest of the day, amazed. This happened this morning. I had only been out of bed a few moments, and wasn't fully awake, but was looking out the window as my brain caught up with my body. We had a dusting of snow last night, and I saw a small tell-tale tunnel  there. Voles, also known as "meadow mice," often leave tunnels in the snow, they fascinate me. This particular tunnel caught my interest because it went from under the heated livestock water bucket, for about 4 feet. Then there was a gap of about 3 feet, then the tunnel resumed. "How did that happen?" I wondered. How did the tunnel stop, then resume at a long distance? Did the vole take a gargantuan leap? As my groggy brain was grappling with this question, a crow swooped down and in a breath taking moment, snatched the very vole whose tunnel I was puzzling over out from its chilly channel, and swooped it up, up into the branch of a dead tree, where he devoured it in 30 seconds flat. 

When I went out to take care of the animals, I checked out the scene of the 'crime.'  First I solved the mystery of the tunnel gap. Where the first tunnel ended, there was a row of wee, tiny, vole footprints over the snows surface. Perhaps the wind had blown the snow too shallow just there for burrowing. Next, the tunnel resumed, took a hard left, and the photo tells the rest of the story... early light, crow foot prints where they landed in the snow, and the imprint of an outstretched wing, where it landed, hard, and plucked the little mammal from it's lair.  

And then there is this.
In the cold and wind I have been feeding the goats and donkeys in the shed more often. And, to be honest, I've been feeding them more than is really necessary. I do this because animals like these stay warm in part by their digestive process, and I want to make sure they have plenty of food to digest so they don't get cold.  The donkeys wasted a good bit of hay, tearing it from the rack and tossing it on the floor.  When I cleaned their donkey dorm, and put the litter out on the manure pile, they suddenly found the very hay they had tossed to be delectable. They spent the better part of a day out there, picking individual blades of hay out of the refuse, and looking very happy.

Oh, in case you are wondering, the goats LOVE their new coats. They stand very still when I put them on, and when I slide a hand between goat and coat, the air is very warm. 

One more small thing to complete this post.  I offered to buy Rachel a new puppy for her upcoming 30th birthday. A litter of pugs was born, not far from here, on solstice.  We've been to see them twice now, once when they were three weeks old, looking for all the world like kissable baked potatoes with legs, and then again when they were 5 weeks old, resembling tiny, squirmy, caricatures of adult pugs. Rachel and Evans picked a fine little girl and she will be coming to brighten all of our lives shortly after Valentines Day. We are so excited! 

The winter days may seem to be much the same, but when I look back at the pictures I snap, I see that there are snippets of interest and wonder dispersed between the cold and dark. In my world, the common thread seems to involve antiques and animals.