Rural Routes, Blog Version

BORN TO BE MILD

This cross-stitch project spoke to me, so I bought it and recently completed it.

I was not born to be mild. I was, however, born to be Wild.

The 1970s song was a bit of a joke for everyone in my family. Our surname resulted in many such jokes.

I always said I was Wild by name, but mild by nature.

Which explains why the cross-stitch project seemed an appropriate way to spend my time this winter.

POSTCARDS

Long winter days are a good time for attempting to reduce accumulated paper.

Five years ago, I did a lot of the same thing as we prepared to move from the farm to the city. Now I am doing it again and I find that I am somewhat more willing to say goodbye to things that I decided to keep five years ago. Only somewhat, mind you. Still, it is progress of a kind.

I sorted out approximately 100 post cards postmarked everywhere from Hong Kong and Kenya to numerous provinces and states in North America. They all qualify as vintage.

I have not sent or received a postcard in a long time. The last times I did, I remember commenting that we would probably be home before the card arrived in the mail. I was right, too.

Do people still send postcards? It is so easy to send photos and messages online these days that I wondered.

When I checked it out online, I discovered that there are still a number of diehard postcard fans who use them regularly. No one that I know., however.

ECLIPSE

You never know what you will find when you go through  closets.

This picture appeared on the front page of the Winnipeg Free Press on February 27, 1979. The multi-exposure shot was taken of the total eclipse of the sun the day before. From left to right, you can see the moon gradually obscuring the sun and the total eclipse appears above the Golden Boy.

The Free Press issued a full-colour memento of the event and that was what I found in my closet.

In February 1979, I was working in an office near the corner of Main and Lombard in downtown Winnipeg. I remember people from the building venturing up to the rooftop to watch. I remember the sky darkening. And I remember this photo on the front page of the Winnipeg Free Press.

COTTON IN THE ROUGH

K was recently in the United States where he saw a harvested cotton field. He stopped and picked some cotton left behind.

I didn’t know what to call these harvested cotton bolls, so I investigated.  Seed cotton apparently. Cotton that has been harvested but not yet ginned. Ginning is the process by which cotton fibres are separated from seeds and lint.

My something learned for the day. Or perhaps relearned. I think I had known it at one time, but the knowledge had been buried.

ROUND AND ROUND WITHOUT END

Usually the best way to begin a jigsaw puzzle is to complete the edge pieces, forming the outer boundaries of the picture which will take shape within.

But not this puzzle. This round puzzle needed to start inside, working its way out to the borders which would only fit a certain way, although there were myriad ways you could put the edge pieces together.

Finding the piece that needed to be moved was like finding the non-functioning light bulb in those old strings of Christmas lights, the kind where the entire string went dark if one bulb was not working.

The puzzle came together quickly until I got to those edge pieces.

A PHOTO I WISH I HAD TAKEN

Waking one morning to a fresh dusting of snow, we were surprised to see animal tracks in the snow in front of our condo.  The tracks continued down the lane that separates us from the next row of townhouses.

They were unmistakably deer tracks and we could see that there had been two animals making them.

I wish I had been awake to see the deer and I wish I had had a camera with me at that time, although I know that any photo I might have taken would not match the picture my imagination has drawn. Two deer treading through newly-fallen snow finding their way toward spring.

-30-