Manly

Guess what has been recently brought to my attention? My new school will NOT have air conditioning.

Oh, the despair! Oh, the humanity! Oh, the drama that will be me the duration of the months of August, September, May, and June.

Me: David! I made the wrong choice! I should not have switched schools! You know how fussy I get when I am too hot! And then to be too hot and deal with the children?!

Yes. I spoke this to David who for most of his life had to work outdoors in all weather conditions. And I spoke those words certain he would feel so sad for me.

***

Well. We hit 26 years as married people! And we did it in style-on a cruise!

This time, we did not take the children, but my parents did join us and fun was had by all!

***

For the second summer in a row, Hadley has worked at a fishing lodge in Alaska. She talked Yesi into joining her and then a couple of weeks later, Carson was also offered a job. So I have two children and a daughter in law all working in Alaska all summer and not spending any time with me at the river. Such sadness. We got a picture of them all in a van on their way to church together.

Let us pause and be impressed that I put smiley faces on the people that weren’t my kin. Because they don’t know me too well and how do I know if they want their picture on a blog called The Lumberjack’s Wife written by a gal who isn’t related to any lumberjacks?

Anyways. We miss them.

***

David 0

Ground Squirrels: 75

Oh! Have I not told you? David has waged a full on war with some sort of creature that we choose to call a ground squirrel. We honestly don’t know what it is. But these things have a whole tunnel system throughout our lands and they steal the meager bounty from our garden and last year they slaughtered several of my newly hatched chicks.

David keeps trying to shoot them-and don’t judge us for shooting things. We live on a farm in the middle of nowhere. It’s like the wild west out here. It just happens. It’s fine.

He tries to shoot them, but he cannot seem to shoot them. And, oh, how it is vexing him! And then I add fuel to the fire by texting him photos of the little beasts as I see them throughout the day, because do you think I am going to fire a gun?

The other night, he was late coming in for dinner so I went to go fetch him and this is what I saw:

I think he is slowly losing his mind.

But we have good news! We were able to finally harvest some strawberries before the ground squirrels ate them!

It was a very exciting moment for us.

David and I have been battling our lands since 2010 trying to grow things. We have conquered the lack of water, no water, and orange water. For every actual plant we have grown, we have grown 274,000 weeds along with it. We are never very successful, yet we persevere.

Now, take my parents. They don’t care. They don’t try. They moved to their place and it had a small raspberry bush and now they are basically raspberry farmers. My dad gets annoyed and chops them and tries to get rid of them, yet they are up to their eyeballs in raspberries. I was over the other day and mom says,

“Oh! Did I tell you? We have strawberries now!”

And, reader. I looked at her with disdain. Actual disdain. Because upon further examination, it looks like the neighbor who lives on the other side of the fence grows strawberries and her strawberries have spread under the fence and given my parents a very nice, healthy strawberry patch. And they didn’t even have to hunt people down on marketplace and drive miles upon miles to take peoples strawberries starts and dig and transplant and water and weed and care.

They just came. And they bore fruit. With nary a ground squirrel in sight.

***

With Yesi and Carson in Alaska, I have Norman back, and let me tell you, these three dogs love me.

And the feeling is mutual, my friends. And even though I cannot get my children to join me much at the river, these three are always game.

***

While we were on our cruise, Eliza Jane gave birth to strapping baby boy!

A little colt! And I want to love him, but he runs away from me and is not interested in meeting my acquaintance.

Me: David! Because I have read “Farmer Boy” a gazillion times, I am so ready for this. I know that it is important not to spoil a young colt and to treat it gently and to be very careful with it!

David:

Me: Almanzo’s father would be proud of me. Father was known through the county for his fine horses you know.

David: This is great. You are using a fiction book to learn how to train a colt.

Me: I would hardly call it fiction! It is about their actual lives!

We haven’t named it yet, but I kind of already did. Since mama is Eliza Jane, I was thinking Almanzo, but to call him Manly, which was Laura’s nickname for him.

And I will love him forever. Or until David makes us sell him.