Pay Attention. Be Astonished. Tell About It.

One day last week I looked up and saw what appeared to be a flock of a thousand light colored birds flying around just over my head.  I stood and watched for several seconds trying to figure out what I was seeing.  

I knew it wasn't birds, but the way the huge group swooped around like a flock of purple martins settling in to bed in Nashville was mesmerizing.  This lasted almost a minute and then the "flock" started to break up and continue floating south.

It was leaves from recently harvested corn.  

My guess is a dust devil formed over a neighboring field, picking up thousands of dry leaves in all shapes and sizes and then luckily flew over our farm.  

Over the last few days I've found some leaves that floated back to earth.  I hope they don't mind hanging around for a bit longer.

Instructions for living a life:

Pay attention.

Be astonished.

Tell about it.

Mary Oliver

Still Spinning

Well, that's sort of a lie, but it made a good title after yesterday's post.  I did actually spin some yarn over the last two days, but if I spun anything else all summer...I can't think of what it was :-/.  I got my Jared shawl knit though and it turned out exactly how I'd hoped, so that's a win.  I'll share some pictures of that on a later post.

This is a small skein of Levi that I spun for a special project...that has been lost in the mail for well over a month now.  I don't feel quite as bad about that since I found out that the USPS has also lost our entire county's property tax bills too, but it's still very frustrating.  That being said, I'd probably look elsewhere for holiday shipping.  Seems to be some serious mail issues currently.

 

Still Out Standing In The Field

I'm still here.  What a summer.  I could go on ad nauseum about...so many things, but I'm just going to share this picture of me and Lily standing down at the gate this morning waiting for it to get light enough to let everyone out.  Still standing.

I'm disappointed that I haven't compiled my August or September "month ends" yet, but there actually was a lot of good to share, so I will, if for no other reason than to remember it all and be grateful.

Everyone else still standing?  

Walking To Work

There was some trouble in the neighborhood a couple of weeks ago so I am now back locking the sheep up at the barn at night. This is our normal fall and winter routine, but in the summer, when it's so blasted hot, I take a chance and leave the gate open so the sheep can head out in the wee hours of the morning and be back in the shade before the sun gets hot.

Murphy is still the flock leader, but he doesn't get up and moving as quickly as Krista used to like, and now her granddaughter Krista, renamed Lily, has taken over as the "Maybe I'll just head on out without the lazy sod" sheep.  

I visited with her for a bit and watched her looking all over the back acreage and tried to see if I could see anything suspicious with her.  She looked left and right and then back left...

 

...and then Murphy came busting through, not looking either direction, and everyone headed out.  

Sometimes he stops and looks and listens, but mostly he just charges on out and those are the days I think maybe the rest of the sheep just let him be the leader so if the lions, tigers and bears are out there...they'll still have a good chance to head back to the barn. ;-)

If you'd like to walk to work with everyone this morning, here's a fun puzzle :-).

A Picture Of Your Cat

Back in the golden old days of blogging there was a common suggestion that if you didn't have something to post to keep your blog current you should at least post a picture of your cat.  Does anyone remember that?  

Here's a picture of Archie. 

I love the lighting and the layers of lights, gates, rafters...  I wish I'd thought to check that he wasn't looking straight at the camera.  Archie...