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Click here to read  INSIDE WELLINGTON... our second section.

THIS WEEK

Golf for a Cure: Frank Kelly Memorial Tourney, A&E: Century Church Theatre presents Gaslight, Events, Rural, Energy Conservation, County, Sports

Rural reality

It’s still 20 minutes to the hour of 5am as I sit down at my computer to rattle off the words that now greet your eyes. It’s extremely warm again, so the windows of the house are set slightly ajar. Even though it is still dark, Lucky, our self-winding alarm clock, is crowing again and again, trying to get his harem up, out and scratching. He is trying to get the point across that the early bird gets the worm. He is answered, not in agreement, on occasion, by the far-reaching, exotic soprano of the peacocks.

This I know is extremely annoying to some, but to me it is like music to my ears. It is exceeded only by the early morning and last-thing-at-night warble of the robin outside my window, which is usually accompanied by the mournful call of the mourning doves as they reassure their twin pair of young back at the nesting site. I can hear also in the distance the tip- tapping of tiny hooves as the young African Boer goats have their early morning king in the castle romp on the picnic table that we have placed in their play paddock beyond the barn.

There is a small scab on my left shoulder that is starting to itch in preparation of departing. This all came about a couple of yesterdays ago when I was out in the garden leaning on the hoe handle that I use mercilessly on the so-called weeds. I was talking to a pair of bluebirds and a pair of tree swallows, both of which are nesting and now feeding young in the houses I have placed on head-high stakes in the strawberry patch.

I had taken off my shirt, as I do for a half hour each day, to soak up a little vitamin D. In the lesser half of a split second, I woke to the rare reality of rural residency. I heard its peculiar staccato buzz as memory snapped back to a similar happening in the years, long gone by, in my youth.

It struck my left exposed freckled shoulder in the immediate small area that can’t be reached by a swat of the right hand. It wouldn’t have made any difference anyway, as movement of that speed is not capable by the human arm. It just tore a huge bite out in passing and took off in directions, direct but unknown. I could feel a drop of blood trickle down my side.

Though this insect was bulgy-eyed and greatly streamlined, it was about the weight, not the shape, of a bungling bumblebee. What it was, folks, was a horsefly, and it came, took, and went in less time than it takes for me to place a period at the end of this sentence. Such so is life in the awaking realities of country living.

The sun is just peeking up over the eastern tree line, so it is time now that I find shorts, socks, shoes, shirt, and signature sun shade (visor) as I’m wearing now only my glasses and the socially unacceptable suit that I was fortunately born in.

Take care, ‘cause we care.

barrie@barriehopkins.ca

519-986-4105

The Wellington Advertiser

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