For hope there must be imagination

photo by Amber Walker

There must be imagination...

 “I hope we find some bones.” (They did.)

“I hope we can dig this tree out of the ground.” (They did!)

“I hope we can find our way back to the house.” (They did.)

We have spent the summer playing with grandsons and we have had such a good time. Six years old, five and three, they play with chickens and lambs, cats and dog.  They run the fields, explore the woods. They build forts in the pasture from old branches. They do archeological digs where ever they find a piece of metal. They excavate rocks from the driveway using the hose and shovels. They strap on backpacks and take their lunches on adventures.

In addition to a week at the farm, their great grandma took them to see Pinocchio at the Children’s Theater, a version of Pinocchio that required a lot of imagination. The actors were all dressed as house painters, their scenery hung from construction scaffolds. The boys were entranced.  After the play we all went out for dessert.

“I hope we get ice cream.” (They did.) 

Across the street from the ice cream shop, was this wonderful piece of graffiti. For hope, there must be imagination.

Fragrance

Two weeks ago, Kieran my three year old grandson, and I peered through the leaves and branches of  a bush watching his parents who were finishing their supper at the restaurant next door. I worried about broken glass, trespassing on the neighbors’ property, and losing sight of Kieran. He reveled in the entire experience. This last weekend, I tucked myself into a lilac and remembered what was so entrancing about the world from inside a bush. Leaves brushed my cheeks, branches crisscrossed my body, and the scent of lilac engulfed me.

The fragrance took me straight back to our backyard in Roseville Terrace  in the 1950’s, where for a few weeks every spring, the scent  of lilacs filled my head and my heart. My friends and I were given two sample size bottles of French Lilac eau de toilette. We thought the idea of dabbing toilet water behind our ears was gross, but the scent was wonderful.    Anytime during the year, we could open the little bottles, sniff, and slip right back into spring.  Perhaps that’s why I love lilacs, their fragrance is a direct line to my childhood memories.

Snuggling

Usually we begin lambing after the 15^th of February and hope to be mostly done by March 15^th when the sap in the maple trees begins to rise. We check the barn for new lambs every three or four hours day and night, and we really appreciate a warm snuggle when we climb back into bed.  Last fall, when our daughter, Laurel, told us they were expecting a baby around the 4th of March, we decided to postpone lambing until the 1st of April.

Lambing in April should be very different from lambing in February and March – less snow and more temperate weather. I’m really looking forward to not losing lambs to the cold. The ewes should need less food because their lambs will only be growing and not trying to keep their body temperature 100 degrees above ambient. Finally, we’ll save electricity because we won’t be using heat lamps in every pen for the first 24 hours after each lamb is born.

Of course we’ll still check the lambs every three to four hours night and day. We’ll probably still have a bottle lamb or two and we may have ewes with lambing problems. But in April, we won’t be dealing with those things in below zero weather.

Instead, we’re spending late February and early March caring for Simon, our new human baby, and his big brother Kieran. Dave and I don’t have to get up in the middle of the night. We work in 68 degree temperatures. We change diapers instead of shoveling manure. We play with toy cars, we make muffins, we read books, and best of all, we snuggle. If we snuggled lambs like we do our grandchildren, we’d never be able to let them go.