Category: Animals
Angry Chick Potholder
I’m spending the day making potholders using the images from the old cloth book that Cindy gave me.
The name of the book is Baby Pets and it has about four pages with pictures of animals in it. The illustrations look like they’re from the 1950’s or 60’s.
I designed 10 so far, but plan on making more using the rest of the images. Then I’ll make them into potholders.
Old Souls Of The Garden
I’m not very good at remembering dates, but I do remember the seasons and flowers that were blooming at certain events in my life.
I know my dog Lestat, who I got when I was 19 years old, died in the early summer because I planted blooming Lupines on his grave. When I see the primroses in the front yard bloom, it reminds me that it’s the time of year that Jon had his open heart surgery. I know our Boston Terrier, Gus, died in the late winter or early spring because the ground was still frozen and we had to wait to month or so to bury him. And I know Frieda died when it was warm enough out for leaves to be on the trees, because I remember how green the woods were when I scattered her ashes there.
This morning I saw the Naked Ladies had bloomed.
These lilies, which I had never seen until we moved to the farm, are just a bunch of bushy leaves in the spring, then disappear till one day, in late summer, they pop up out of the ground, their pinkish/purple flower reaching for the sky, with hints of blue and yellow, on a naked stem.
I aways think of them as “old” flowers. The ones that survive untended, like iris and peony.
Now the blooming Naked Ladies, will always remind me of when Red died. A good flower for Red, beautiful and dependable, old souls of the garden.
Good Monday Morning From Bedlam Farm 7/12/19
Baby Barn Swallows
It’s the second brood of Barn Swallow babies. I’ve seen the poop under the nests, but this is first time I’ve seen the babies before they flew the coop.
I found a lot of dead baby birds, in he beginning of the summer, but none with this second hatching. I hope to see these birds flying around soon.
Rosemary With Flowers In Her Hair
It’s that time of year when the sheep come in from grazing with all kinds of thing stuck in their wool. I try to keep Burdock from growing because its flowers are round balls, that stick like velcro. They are impossible to get out of the sheep’s wool.
Most of the plants the sheep pick up are easy to pull out, or will be gone by shearing time in October. But by the end of August I’ll close off the back pasture to make sure the wool stays as clean as possible.
I just paid off the down payment on the spring wool I’ll be getting back as yarn in the fall. But now I’m already beginning to think about the Fall shearing.
That seems to be the way of the farm. Always thinking ahead to the next season.
Our New Podcast. “Goodbye Red, Loss Is Loss”
Jon and I just made a new podcast called, Goodbye Red, Loss is Loss. You can listen to it here.
It’s not a sad podcast, it’s really just Jon and me talking about Red and our feelings now that he gone.
You can listen to any of our Katz and Wulf on Bedlam Farm podcasts anytime, by clicking here or on the Podcast Buttons on the top and bottom of my blog.
Thanks for listening!
Red, A Place Of Love
Early Friday morning I woke thinking of Red and not able to fall back to sleep. So I got up and went outside. It was still dark, the sky filled with more stars than I’ve seen all summer. I walked out into the pasture, and just sat, looking at the sky.
I watched long enough for my eyes to adjust to the darkness, to see a few shooting stars, meters leaving thick sizzling trials of light that faded in moments. I watched long enough for the sky to lighten and the stars lessen.
I didn’t know we’d be euthanizing Red later that morning. But I was relieved when Dr. Fariello returned Jon’s call to let us know she’d come in on her day off to keep Red, and us, from having to wait till Monday when we had an appointment with her.
Red was so much Jon’s dog I was surprised by what I felt yesterday after we euthanized him. I lost all my energy physically and emotionally. I couldn’t explain what I was feeling, I just wanted to sleep.
Sleep has always been my friend. A place I can usually count on to go for healing. Something happens when I sleep, I don’t know what it is, but it somehow seems to realign my subconscious and on waking, I often feel better.
This morning both Jon and I laughed when I told him I had that song in my head that goes…”One less phone to answer, one less fish to fry” (I think those are the words).
I loved being able to dig a hole in the pasture for Red’s body. We only had an hours notice for Red’s appointment at the Vet, and I didn’t think I’d be able to dig a big enough and deep enough hole in the hard, rocky soil.
I actually love the ritual of the digging. The hard, repetitive work it takes. It gave me something important to do. A place to put my energy. A gift to honor Red and a way to keep him close, to bury him where he belonged.
I couldn’t help think of the people who died in the shooting last weekend and their families. Not to compare, but to keep perspective. To me they are very different. More like different degrees of something similar. And while my mind was doing one thing, trying to think through what I was feeling, my body was doing another.
I knew I had to let myself feel what I feel, without trying to push or think it away.
Last night Jon and I took a ride to get ice-cream. On the way he told me how much he appreciated that I cancelled my standing Friday lunch with my fiends to be with him. He said he wanted to be with me, but couldn’t ask. He said at times like this, he usually withdraws into himself.
In the hour before Red died, I could feel myself getting angry. I snapped at Jon when he asked me a question. When he said to me, “Let’s be nice to each other” and I saw how I often process pain by lashing out. By getting angry instead of allowing myself to feel the hurt.
Red, with his big heart, was genius at opening people up. He would walk into a room filled with people anywhere Jon took him, walk up to stranger, look at them and they would melt.
Yesterday, once again, he did the same for me and Jon. Helping to open us up to each other and to realize old destructive patterns that come from a place of pain instead of love.
Losing Red
Red died this morning. I don’t have the words yet to write about it yet, but you can read Jon’s beautiful writing about Red and how he died on Jon’s blog.
Jon and Red have been together almost as long as Jon and I have been together. Bedlam Farm will be a different place without him.
Lulu
Fanny nuzzled my back almost knocking me over as I crouched in the barnyard scratching Lulu under her chin. Lulu rested her head on mine as I scratched Fanny’s neck.
I sat that way for a while this mornings, surrounded by donkeys feeling their gentle need for my attention and letting them know my need of theirs.
