quiet days & the lonesome old homestead

I hope that these lovely days of quiet January are just what your heart needs.

I love them, for the stillness and the slowness of them. The contentment in them.

I can dream and draw, make plans, move furniture and clean the

clutter away from my heart

and my old farmhouse,

No hurry or scurry.

My farmer and I like to go traveling the countryside of our high desert

on these cold quiet days of January.

Taking the big 4 wheel drive down winding & muddy roads out into old homestead country

we often come across old homestead houses and barns,

falling down fences, rock cribs marking the 4 corners of the places

and sometimes, if we're lucky,

we find a once beautiful old homestead house.

I like to think of the lady of this old house standing on her porch a 100 years or so ago,

shading her eyes and looking out into the vast openness, looking for a puff of dust.

Knowing that puff of dust

was her farmer with his plow and horses working up a new field.

She would have dinner cooking in the wood cook stove, maybe a venison roast

and few carrots and potatoes, some good biscuits,too.

The scent of burning juniper wood in the air,

a faint blue smoke rising from the skinny kitchen chimney.

The laundry flapping in the wind on a make-do clothesline out back of house.

A few chickens scurrying and scratching around the kitchen screen door.

This old homestead was a once grand place.

At one time it had fancy cut shingles,

glass windows, a wide porch, a parlor, a kitchen lean-to

a garden with herbs and wild yellow roses

and a lovely privy out at the end of a rock edged path

in the back.

It was indeed grand and full of hope.

like the dreams of these old homesteaders,

grand and hopeful.

Until then, we are off, traveling the country side

to find more treasures of our high desert to

share.

I hope that these quiet days are filled with what you need,

peace filled and hopeful

in this new year...

which I'm calling the "aughts"

"aught ten" feels good to me.