Crow and Crew

Illness has reminded me to slow down and pick the broccoli, spinach and asparagus, and to head to the greenhouse for rainforest temperatures and humidity.  Finding me there in long sleeves, Karen nodded, "yes, you must still have the fever." 

I spent the afternoon with Wendell Berry after finishing one of my least favorite chores of the year, income taxes.  Thank you, Liz, for Jayber Crow, and the salty drops sliding down my cheek on the final page.  Only two, mind you, "I'm a man, after all," which reminds me of the recent silliness about pink toenails on the 5-year-old boy in a J. Crew's ad.  I think "talking heads" is a misnomer; "talking pie-holes" would be more accurate, mouths moving without any clear connection to their brains.

"We have a black one," says Karen from the basement, "that makes ten chicks so far."  This incubator batch is proving much more successful than the first one.  I've become so accustomed to hearing chirping from the basement that yesterday when the first one popped out of its shell -- and I mean "popped," no dawdling, that one -- I kept working on our taxes without mentioning it.  I'd forgotten she'd moved the other batch outdoors to what used to be our duck house.

"You guys are quite the farmers," says Virginia.

Hardly.  To call us farmers is inconsiderate and demeaning to real farmers, who are truly Renaissance people. I balk at buying a tractor for two reasons: (1) I don't need one; and (2) I wouldn't know how to repair it, unlike a real farmer.