Sleeping in the Sunshine

Sunday afternoon, Camille's boyfriend came up to keep her company while she recuperated from having her wisdom teeth pulled.  I sent them down to the barn to clean the rabbit's litter box while I worked on dinner.  Camille had finished off the mashed potatoes I made her and was working her way through the chocolate pudding.  She wanted to know why the pudding tasted so good.  Not at all like the stuff from the refrigerated section of the grocery store.  I laughed.  This is the pudding my mother made when I was a little kid.  Its the best.

A few minutes later they burst into the kitchen.  Camille said that Jackson was sleeping in his paddock and I had to go see because he was sooooo cute.  I was busy throwing bread dough around, with my sweatshirt sleeves pushed up above my elbows and flour stuck to my hands.  I told her to take my camera and go get some pictures.  But Mom, by the time I get down there he will have gotten up.  You'll miss it.

Wrong.

While Tuffy and Finessa stood guard by Jackson, Flash, Winston and Mufasa relaxed in the sunshine.

And Jackson slept on.  Do you think he's drooling in the dirt?

Sunday Stills: One Tree

This is our storm tree.

It is in almost every post I write; showing our daily weather.

We planted this sycamore tree in 2002, the year that we built our home.

Sycamores are my favorite tree.

They are native to our mountains.

We planted a lot of them.

Sycamores have jigsaw puzzle grey bark,

large maple shaped leaves,

green in the summer,

covered with fuzz in the spring,

brown and gold in the fall.

Last winter this tree lost half of its central trunk

during a storm

with sideways sleet, hail, thunder and lightning.

The limb snapped in two

and we found it with its tip

touching the ground

in the morning.

Now it is bushy at the bottom 

and sparse at the top.

It's a wounded warrior,

still standing strong.

Our storm tree.