It's almost the end of August, and after a long summer break it is time to return to "Musings from the Farm". I know there is still the open ending of our "escape" from Argentina, and I hope to return to that in time as well. Right now, however, the farm is a lot closer than South America, and here, too, every day can bring a new adventure.
Take yesterday, for example. ...
Tonight while digging potatoes for a late supper I saw something crawling slowly across the dirt where I had just pulled a potato plant. As far as I can determine it was a tiger salamander, probably a grey tiger salamander. It's an amphibian found in the northern states, too. I took him in my hand to get a good look at him: his skin felt smooth and cool, and he was about as long as my hand head to tail, dark grey (or maybe dark green) with paler spots, a typical newt head, and the neatest feet: his front feet had four toes, the hind ones five. They looked like perfect little hands, so delicately formed.
I put him right back where I found him, and I suppose he'll now have to dig a new burrow. Of course I felt bad to have, however innocently, destroyed his home. A few years ago I had found a salamander much like him in the garden, too, that time in the strawberry patch which was then about where the potatoes are now. I wonder if it's still the same little guy. I read they can get really old, up to eighty years. Amazing, isn't it?
A bit later.
By now it was getting pretty dark. I took the laundry off the line and saw something fluttering above, doing an elegant dive every once in a while: a small bat on its nightly hunting excursion. They, too, I don't see very often around here, so you can imagine my thrill at watching it. Two in one day - hard to beat that, isn't it?
Right now I'm still waiting for the rye bread to finish baking. At harvest time sandwiches are our staple food, so I decided to bake a bit in advance to not be stuck in the middle of combining.
I read some poetry by Jane Kenyon earlier today. When, you ask, do I have time to read poetry? At naptime - one has to keep sane one way or another! I've liked almost everything I've read from her, and this struck me as particularly poignant in my state of mind this summer:
Not Writing
A wasp rises to its papery
nest under the eaves
where it daubs
at the gray shape,
but seems unable
to enter its own house.
(Jane Kenyon)
There is one more encounter that, to me, belongs with the other two although it happened very early this morning, simply because it was another surprise from the natural world.
I woke up from a noise in the living room when it was still dark: Stanley, our cat, who had managed to escape detection last night when I went to bed and had spent the night snoring on the couch or one of the kitchen chairs. He has a way of making his presence known at night when he wants out, so I groped around in the dark until I found him and stepped out on the deck.
It was surprisingly mild, and the sky was bright with stars. As always the Big Dipper and Cassiopeia greeted me, and the tiny cluster of light that makes up the Seven Sisters. But there, just above the tops of the poplars in the southeast, I saw three well-known stars lined up: Orion's belt! So it's that time of year again already, time for my favourite constellation to appear in the night sky. I had no idea he was up and about at the end of August already, the companion of my fall and winter nights, and if it hadn't been for Stanley I probably wouldn't have found out for a while.
