Happy morning from Wildwood Acres!
The late summer sky flaunting the most vibrant of blue today. Eggs have been collected, chickens are free ranging, pups have been fed & clothes are on the line. There’s still some coffee in the press & the house is filled the lingering scents of warm oatmeal & maple syrup. We’re ready to embrace the day!
So… Great news! I did NOT pull a worm out of my son’s butt last week! Yes. I seriously thought Jabba had a belly full of creepy crawlies. If you have a weak stomach, slam your laptop shut immediately, because the sordid details of this story will absolutely make you want to hurl for the rest of the day. YOU. HAVE. BEEN. WARNED. So during what I thought was a routine diaper change, I noticed a peculiar, smudge covered little “something” dangling out of my son’s pooper. Naturally I pulled it out the rest of the way & to my suprise, it kept coming & coming & coming until I found myself holding up what I can only describe as about 7 inches of flat, white(ish), poop covered grossness. Like any level-headed mother would do, I immediately threw it onto the floor & screamed an obscenity, to which my son replied “Why are you yewwing at my butt?” The next logical step was to grab my son’s plastic magnifying glass, a treasure we snagged from a bubble gum machine for a quarter at Food Lion last week. Basically my diaper-less, crap covered son & I spent about 10 minutes down on our hands & knees dissecting poo in the middle of his bedroom floor. (Oh the memories we make together!) So, I put the specimen into a plastic ziplock baggie & immediately took him to the doctor. There we were, the doc, the nurse, the nursing assistant & some other random administrative looking person from the front desk, all taking turns using Jabba Man’s junky little bubble gum machine magnifying glass to marvel at the unidentified crap covered object. Long story short, the doc sent “smudgy” off to the lab & a couple days later we got the phone call which confirmed that our son is a peculiar little boy who apparently eats grass. What a relief! Let’s face it, the child digs in the dirt all day long, pulls on puppy dog tails, eats figs, blueberries & tomatoes right off the vine & I’m certain I’ve witnessed him smear sand on his tongue. He’s essentially the perfect candidate for worms! I don’t feel like I overreacted. Having said that, if I had to do it all over again, I probably wouldn’t have thrown the poop strand on the floor.
Next… A guy came to our house yesterday & dropped off a massive truckload of firewood. It’s official… We are rich! There’s no amount of money or gold or precious gems of any sort that could ever compare to the feeling of wealth I get when I lay eyes on the first cords of seasoned firewood to arrive at the end of a long, sweltering hot summer. When we lived in the middle of the city, Josh would call to have some random guys from the country deliver our wood in the early fall. I’d watch them roll up in their beat-up, mud-covered truck. Poorly, hand-painted lettering scratched out the words “Seasoned Firewood” with a phone number across the crushed tailgate. Every time they arrived it felt like Christmas morning. I almost always made some kind of stew or zucchini bread or fall-flavored treat on those days, just to signify the certainty of seasonal shift in the air. I would watch them unload the wood & always asked to help. They never let me participate, but I almost always began stacking as soon as they left. Waking up the next morning to sore arms & stiff shoulders gave me such a sense of satisfaction. Knowing I contributed just a tiny bit of work to keep my family warm during the winter months fed my soul like few things ever could. Those simple tastes of country life while living in a city lit a fire in my heart, and with each passing year, the annual firewood delivery solidified my vision & soul’s desire to reside in nature, to raise my family among the trees & to feed them homegrown goodness. Each season, upon that truck’s arrival I found myself feeling homesick for a place I’ve never known. A place tucked away in the woods, surrounded by gardens & serenaded by roosters. A place with an efficient home built to safely cradle our family all year long & to house our most precious antiques & possessions, a home that exudes love & life in every season. I pictured a Vermont castings stove loaded up with those splintering, chunky gifts from God, searing hot, while wood smoke billowed from the roofline filling the cold, crisp air with that earthy, signature fragrance of fall & winter. I envisioned a clothesline full of color swaying in the spring breeze & a watermelon patch pushing through the garden & climbing over my poor tomato plants at the end of each summer. That fireplace in our city home stoked my imagination with endless daydreams of country life. That city fireplace in our city home fueled my burning desire to homestead with our brood & grow old among the trees with my precious soul mate. That fireplace in the city made me homesick for Wildwood Acres – a place with a Vermont castings woodstove, a clothesline, a garden full of vines, nestled in the woods. A place that only lived in my wildest dreams. Until now.
Always keep dreaming my friends.
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