We had an ICE STORM.

Ice covered EVERYTHING—

every single blade of grass that poked its tip out of the crusted snow.

Boughs bent slowly down.

Icicles followed, curving toward the ground.

Iris felt the weight of ice that pained the plants.

Futilely, she tried to relieve them of their burden.

She was sad she could not help them.

I tried to distract her with beauty.

But all she could think about was pain.

When someone finally stops talking about something,

how do we know whether or not they are still thinking about it?

Umbels!

And grids.

This is our woods.

The most beautiful place.

These are my children.

I took them out into the ice storm as great branches cracked and tumbled to the ground.

Late in the summer, I put an ad in Front Porch Forum, the local virtual bulletin board: free mulch. Chloe came from around the corner with her garden cart. She filled the cart up in a leisurely manner, which both children appreciated. So did I. She told us where she lived. And so we saw her house each time we walked by, and we noticed, not long thereafter, that she had her own gigantic pile of wood chips delivered. I had thought she might come back for more. It would have been nice.

So towards autumn, I wrote her a letter, offering some strawberries. She came and dug them up slowly, quite slowly, with even greater leisure than she had shoveled wood chips. Indeed, I had never seen anyone dig strawberries so slowly in all my life. Akiva quite enjoyed it. Iris was at Mz. Terri’s, I believe. Which Chloe may have been a little disappointed about, or Iris may have been a little disappointed about— I forget which.

Later I discovered that her father might also like some strawberries. That was a good thing! So Chloe had to come dig up more strawberries. It was a good thing no one was paying her to dig strawberries! Poo! Akiva could have dug faster than that! Well, perhaps the slowness was due to the fact that Akiva was actually the one doing the digging. I don’t recall. But when the last strawberry was dug, I knew I’d run out of things to give her, and I believe I told her so.

“I don’t know how I’ll get you to come back,” I said.

“Well,” she said, “I’d like to.”

The days just seem to tumble one after the other and we haven’t really gotten to see her much, even tho she lives almost just around the corner.

Lucky for us, now and again we remember to visit. Or she does. I don’t have any photos of her, tho.

Here she took a walk with us into the woods to discover which patches of ice were frozen.

We found a few.

Last year’s baby goats, grown big, are surrounded by a tall fence.

Bears can not get in.

But the hen house door was not shut tight,

and in the bears did wander.

First, scattering the chickens, they went after the eggs.

Then they had their way with the hens themselves.

Mad bears!

They had themselves some fun.

They had snow.