The way the temperature is fluctuating up and down and breaking season records leaves me to believe that a diagnostic guesstimation of Mother Nature being bipolar and off of her medications would not be too far from wrong.
I wonder if Jack Frost could get off his butt, stop hanging around, and get out of her hair for the rest of the spring season.
I can tell by the way that my chuckle bucket is overflowing that people are getting bored. Here is one that I have just picked up off the floor, which, because of government shenanigans, kind of sticks in the back of my head.
It reads exactly like this:
“A father told his three sons when he sent them to the university: ‘I feel it’s my duty to provide you with the best possible education, and you do not owe me anything for that. However, I want you to appreciate it. As a token, please each put $1,000 into my coffin when I die.’
“And so it happened. His sons became a doctor, a lawyer, and a financial planner, each very successful financially. When their father’s time had come, and they saw their father in the coffin, they remembered his wish.
“First, it was the doctor who put ten $100 bills onto the chest of the deceased. Then, came the financial planner, who also put $1,000 there.
“Finally, it was the heartbroken lawyer’s turn. He dipped into his pocket, took out a cheque book, wrote a cheque for $3,000, put it into his father’s coffin, and took the $2,000 cash as his change.”
Kind of reminds me of the hidden taxes we are forced to pay. What are your thoughts?
Meanwhile, bad weather interruptions or not, the construction of our mobile chicken house, which will enable us to produce eggs from free-range chicken while giving them new forage area daily if needed, is progressing quite nicely. But to keep building costs down, as well as the future price of eggs, we decided to go to a recycled building supply place to purchase some low-priced reclaimed windows.
The place was about 40 minutes north of WestWind Farms, so we decided to take some back roads just to see the countryside. With the leaves not yet on the trees, it definitely was much easier to see what, where, and not necessarily why, things had mushroomed at the end of those curving driveways.
What we discovered leads me to believe that we should now be calling this cottage country, instead of cattle country, as the hidden cottages and camping trailers outnumber by far the tumbled-down barns that once housed beautiful herds of hamburger on the hoof.
Coming around a curve in the road, we were surprised to see a number of turkey vultures perched, one on each fence post, some of them sitting with wings outstretched, with hopes of catching the warmth of the sun that was still behind heavily overcast skies. On getting closer, we were surprised to see that the fence T’d at this point, and what we saw parallel to the road was only a small part of the flock that was actually there.
The stem of the T went up over the steep incline, and on each post, up over the ridge as far as we could see, was an identical bird. There must have been close to 30 or more of them, each with bulging crop and patiently waiting for the sun to come out, creating the updrafts on which their outstretched wings will carry them skyward, soaring circle after circle higher, higher and higher.
As they are carrion eaters, I suspect there was a rather large coyote-killed or road-killed carcass lying somewhere in the close vicinity, most likely a deer.
Vultures, worldwide, are known as Mother Nature’s undertakers.
Take care, ’cause we care.
barrie@barriehopkins.ca
519-986-4105