Alive and well

It's so wonderful that life offers pockets of comedy, even in the face of grief and loss. Watching our puppy chase butterflies, or rather their shadows on the ground, never fails to make me laugh out loud. 

Trying not to smile when my six-year-old (who is learning to sound out words) asks, "Mommy, does the F-word start with f?"... Some of you might not find this funny, but the ones who know me and my terrible potty mouth might.

In the midst of crying over my friend's suicide and another friend's death in a car accident, I find lots of things to be grateful for, maybe BECAUSE of these deaths. After all, we are alive, and we are well.

I'm feeling incredibly grateful for our beautiful piece of land, which grounds me and serves as my mental health therapy. It doesn't hurt that it also puts out a lot of food already!

And the flowers! The flowers! I pick huge bouquets of roses and peonies and station them around the house, so we can smell them inside and outside. I grow perennial flowers in various flower beds around our place, and I also like flowers in my vegetable garden, because they look pretty and attract pollinators.

Steve, the kids and I worked in the yard all day on Memorial Day. We went a little bit insane and paid for it the next day since we were so sore. But we got a lot done! Steve did macho stuff with the chainsaw that involved trimming up some pretty big trees that had gotten too overgrown, shading my precious flowers. I single handedly weeded so much buttercup and grass from under the blueberry bushes that my hands could hardly milk the goats the next morning. We also weeded the garden and mowed the lawn. Our place now looks worthy of being featured in Sunset Magazine or something.

We bribed the kids into helping by promising strawberries and whipping cream later on. It worked. They kicked butt.

If you look closely, you can see Steve on the ladder with a chainsaw in the middle of the picture. See how all that green swallows everything?

Another source of comedy and comfort are our animals. Truly, how could you be sad when you watch the puppy sniff noses with our new baby pigs, or when you hang out with the goats and chickens? Our baby chicks are now 3 months old, and the roosters are starting to crow. The other day I milked the goats in the barn and heard a terrible screaming sound outside. I just about knocked over the milk bucket trying to figure out who got killed. Turned out it was the rooster who tried to crow for the first time in his life. Yeah, keep practicing, buddy.

And lastly, who cheers me up most are my children. This weekend, little Eva got to hang out with her best friend and even be the hostess of a sleepover. These girls played in the garden for hours, making up games, grazing on fennel and kale. At one point, I asked them if they were fairies. They looked at me a little disdainfully and said, "No, we are obviously wolves." Right.

In the picture, their teeth are green because they are eating fennel. Obviously.

Let me leave you with a picture of my Cabra Al Vino. Remember, if you want to learn how to make cheese from me, take my self-paced, start-anytime online cheesemaking course. I promise, it's super fun!