Rural Routes, Blog Version

I can count fourteen deer in the field across the road. With the aid of binoculars, I can see them more clearly.

But without a zoom lens on my camera, I cannot capture their shapes as anything more than dots on the landscape.

They have been here for three days now, dining on the leftovers from last fall’s soybean crop. Deer love soybeans. Fresh is best, but freeze-dried works, too.

Whenever they venture closer – close enough that I think I just might be able to get a good picture – the dogs are alerted to their presence. Their barking sends the deer back towards the bush.

GOOD FRIDAY

When I was a child, I thought that Good Friday was the longest, most boring holiday of the year. You could not go anywhere, because everything was closed. We only had two TV stations (CBC English and CBC French), but all regular programming was preempted by Good Friday religious specials.

The one bright spot was Amma’s Good Friday hot cross buns. Our grandmother did not use a sweet bun recipe; she just formed regular bread dough into bun shapes. When they were still warm from the oven, she would drizzle criss-crosses of white icing over each. We ate them enthusiastically and quickly because you had to eat them when they were warm to get the full effect.

We always marked Good Friday’s weather on the calendar because my dad said that whatever happened on Good Friday would be repeated for the next forty days. Often these predictions were accurate.

K and I still make note of the weather on the Friday before Easter. This year it was cold, but sunny and dry.

I make hot cross buns on Good Friday, too, but they are a sweet bun with fruit, raisins and seasonings. The recipe is in a 1947 Robin Hood Flour Mills cookbook that my Amma gave me in 1979. I have to make adjustments to the recipe to allow for the substitution of instant yeast for yeast cakes and sometimes it turns out better than others.

And, although we do usually stay home on Good Friday, there are plenty of places we could go. Few places are closed. And if we wanted religious programming, we would have to search for a specialty channel that offered it.

NEW DOG IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD

There’s a new dog in the neighbourhood, a large and friendly coon hound who has discovered that there are two dogs just down the road.

Zipper, our thirteen-year-old border collie female, pays him no mind, although she is not about to let him anywhere near her food bowl. Not if she can help it.

Jaeger, our three-year-old Australian blue heeler/border collie cross male, hasn’t quite made up his mind about this new fella.

From the inside of the house, he growls aggressively every time he sees the coon hound. But if we let him outside, he immediately wants back in.

Not a fighter, our Jaeger.

But not a friend, either. At least not yet.

TELEPHONE BANKING

In preparation for the big move in our future, I have begun going through tubs in the basement. We have farm paperwork dating back to 1978, the year we were married. I know that CRA does not require us to hang on to documents that long and I have many years’ worth of shredding ahead of me.

I am not attacking this project with any method other than grabbing the first box in view, opening it to see how old it is and then shredding the contents or saving them as necessary.

Right now I am in the mid-1990s. I found a letter from our bank announcing the start of telephone banking. I was required to provide the bank with a list of account numbers for the bills I would wish to pay via phone. The bank provided me with a temporary telephone banking password to use until I could select one of my own.

I presume it is the same password I would use now if I could remember it. Not too long ago, when online banking was not available, I tried to access assistance via the phone but was stymied when the electronic voice asked for my password.

Telephone banking was such a big deal at the time. Now it seems old-fashioned.

LIBRARIES

I have always imagined a library of my own: walls lined with shelves, shelves lined with books.

At one point, I did have one whole wall in the living room filled with bookcases. At first, the books were listed in alphabetical order by author. Eventually, the books were lined three deep on the shelves and order of any kind went out the window.

In the interest of space, the bookcases in the living room were emptied, their contents going to smaller bookcases in the office and bedrooms. Those for which there was no room went down to the basement.

I admit that the living room looked a great deal larger without all those books.

I have, over the years, disposed of books in yard sales and donated them to book drives and thrift stores.

“You’re not selling MY books, are you?” K would ask.

“No, of course not,” I would answer.

Which is why  the majority of the books I am now going through in the basement are his. He denies it, of course.

I love books. I love reading them. I love borrowing them. I love owning them. It’s sorting and moving and deciding what to do with them that I hate.

If I could, I’d whisper in the ear of that 20-year-old who wanted her own library.

“Be careful what you wish for,” I’d say.

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