Playing in the Pasture With the Payne’s

Toni and Danny called Saturday night to see if we had Sunday plans. Nope. Ok, you do now, they said. Woo-Hoo, let’s hear it for spontaneous family fun days.

We played outside all afternoon despite the grey skies. We rode the razor, of course. But we also did some nature exploring to show Toni some of our previous nature mysteries. Lily and I had stumbling upon some huge debris nests months ago. There were three of these nests in an abandoned barn and each had a good-sized entry hole. We had no idea what might live inside. Toni took one look and said, “Wood rats.” She explained to Lily that the wood rat home ran underneath the mounds, too. Lily wanted to know if they knew we were outside their homes and Toni explained that the rats could probably smell us and feel the vibration from us walking around their nests. I think Lily had a little image in her head of an army of rats down there waiting for us to take one step closer and then they would come streaming out, teeth bared. Ok maybe that’s just my imagination.

Toni visiting the Wood Rat Housing Development

All piled in and ready for action

Lily also spotted this yarn with porcupine quills embedded in it. Weird combo of nature and man-made. We wondered if the porcupine wore it awhile before managing to finally throw it off with the quills. Toni told Lily to always look for porcupines up in trees. Apparently, porcupines like to sleep up in the trees – or maybe that is the best place to hang out and wait for knitters to come by with pretty yarn to attack. In fact, maybe a knitters’ body is up one of those trees. Ok my imagination again. Sorry.

I guess we won’t try to knit this into a blanket.

The sunflowers are still knee-high but now a snarl of dying leaves, vines and limp buds.

We took a few minutes today to put a cross on Minnie’s grave. It has been a hard first week without Minnie. Sweet Minnie ran into traffic on the highway Monday night or early Tuesday. Randall and Lily found her by the side of the road on the way to school Tuesday morning. It was a bad impact and Randall said she didn’t suffer. Everyday this week, watching Lily get off the bus, we couldn’t help but miss the sight of Minnie standing there wagging her tail and waiting for her best friend to step down off the bus. Lily, too, missed that special moment in the day. Minnie had an extra helping of that boundless enthusiasm that is easy to love in dogs. They couldn’t hide it if they tried. Their eyes and tails just say too much. Sometimes it seems like dogs enjoy life more than any of us – certainly more than cats and cows, our other farm companions who seem perpetually bored with their surroundings. Dogs sort of remind us that we are supposed to be happy, loving and thankful everyday. Her life was too short but it was happy. Goodbye Sweet Minnie.

Randall made a cross for Lily to decorate.

Her grave is under an old cottonwood near the junk pile, one of Minnie’s favorite sniffing spots.