awful night

Glad to be up and about. Little sleep and poor.

Had several vicious nightmares last night. Strangely, woke up feeling rather detached and even indifferent. The silver lining was that I loitered part of the night away watching the Annanberg CPB show about sedimentary rocks and then the one on metamorphic rocks. The perfect antidote to macabre machinations of the dark.

My back got quite sore from all the pruning I did yesterday. Over half the apple trees are finished now and I'll probably finish the last yellow delicious today and start on the biggest tree in the middle of the orchard tomorrow.

There are now 19 wild turkeys grazing on our farm. They rushed me as I came out of the barn this morning, that was kinda scary. The one big ol' Tom has a beard about 9 inches long and the most spectacular bronze colors on his feathers. I quick grabbed a couple of dried corn cobs we saved from last season and broke them out some feed. It's things like that which always makes me laugh at the environmentalist's rhetoric against the farmer. Farms make more wildlife than those idiots could ever comprehend. But they're always railing against us and our fertilizer run-off and pesticides. As if any farmer still in business would waste fertilizer or pesticide so as to create run-off. Duh! Somebody tell them it ain't the '50s anymore.

Have a great and restful day.

Another lovely day of frustration

The sun is bright and warm, the air sweet with a gentle winter breeze. The ground is frozen hard like the heart of a vicious frost giant. Lovely crystals of ice decorate the driveway and orchards and I hate it.

The beauty is wonderful but it is just killing my ability to get done the serious jobs I have to do. And I'm sick and tired of spinning my wheels with make-work and trivial chores. It's too frozen to work on the equipment and even pruning is difficult with 2 inches of hoar-frost to contend with.

Sorry to be whiny like that, I sometimes forget how wonderful a life I have and what great luck to live in this land of freedom and choice. It is kinda funny and ironic though that things can be simultaneously so great and also so irritating.

Wishing you all a smoother and more melodious day.