Showing posts with label pond. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pond. Show all posts
Friday, June 30, 2017
Friday, December 21, 2012
Red Fox in the Snow
Life changes and changes live. The frolicking vixen becomes a mother with five kits to feed. Call me Red. You know me.
The following is a story I imagined from this painting of a peaceful small village in the South of France after a rare snow. The painting is the creative work of Jane Johnson of West Jefferson, NC. We collaborated for an art exhibit called, "More than Words," at the Ashe Arts Center in September, 2012.
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| Painting by Jane Johnson of West Jefferson, NC |
Red Fox in the Snow
Life changes and changes live. The frolicking vixen becomes a mother with five kits to feed. Call me Red. You know me.
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Just last
week in the South of France, the weather was dry, warm and luxurious, but this
week brought the unexpected snow. Only yesterday, Lady Jeanne of the House
worked outdoors gathering sticks and hauling off debris. One moment she worked
under a bright blue sky as a light wind spread a fresh cool. The wind grew
strong though and whipped the creaky trees. It howled louder by the hour with dark
clouds building, and when it finally stopped, we were surrounded by a silent
leaden stillness.
The snow
started at nightfall, and by morning, we had a white new world. It has been such
fun for my kittens, so new! I can hear the scratching of a mouse under the blanket
right in front of me, a hardier kind of food for the family waiting now in the
cold den. As this day ends and night returns, I will deliver the fresh meat and
then return in cover of dark for the pomegranate.
My life has
been a short eight years. Lady Jeanne is ninety but she may have more years
left than I do. I am not afraid of her. She watches me through the window and
sometimes leaves morsels on her doorstep like my favorite melon and tips of
squashes and eggplant. I don’t think she minds sharing her pomegranates. It is
a good thing because there is no camouflaging myself in this snow.
During
spring and summer, I foraged for flowers that bloomed on the shrubs and the
fruits that came after. Those were tasty, but since the apples of autumn,
finding fruit is much harder. The long-lasting pomegranate here is a lucky
find. The fruit remains on the branches into winter, drying and hardening, but
inside there are juicy seeds with a lingering tang of late summer. Lady Jeanne
knows I take one now and then. You can bet I’ve marked my territory.
The seasons
affect changes within the pond too. Fish are delicious but hard to catch except
in summer when the water is warm and minnows swim close to the bank. It is
easier to catch frogs and big-eyed grasshoppers. Lizards and small snakes have
completely disappeared in the cold.
How well the
trees dress for the seasons. In spring they wear pastel pink buds and
chartreuse leaves, and then for summer they change into deep verdant greens. By
fall, they’re all wearing madras! In winter, a time when they bare most of
their bark, ours are cloaked in mistletoe. Others don only a pearly broach of
it. Today, they all wear robes of snow.
Weather is
not too hard on the structures here, though there is some wearing of stone,
rusting of metal and warping of wood over time. Lady Jeanne has seen more of
that than I will ever see. She stores potatoes and carrots in a root cellar,
and she is a foxy lady. I can’t dig into it. The walls are too thick.
Soon after
the ides of winter, a funny little boy comes to visit Lady Jeanne. Any day, he
will arrive again with the others, and then I will bring all my kits and we
will watch them in the warm house through the windows. Their gifts will be more
than food, but late at night, I expect there will be delicious morsels we have
never tasted left for us on the doorstep. For this it is hard to wait.
Diana Renfro, 2012
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Tuesday, March 27, 2012
How We Began
When we bought the
land in Ashe County we needed to find the people who would be our friends and
neighbors.
There were five homes on Young Road in what they call Young Hollow. Kenneth and Mary are at the end of that road and Granny Young nearby. Some of the homes belong to Walters who are related to both the Young family and the Waddell family (who we bought from.) Pauline Walters was our closest neighbor and her sons, Johnny, Eddie and Larry, and a daughter JoAnn (Phillips) were nearby. All were eager to help us settle in and learn about the fauna and flora and would help with anything we asked.
The natural surroundings had such appeal even in winter. I couldn't wait to see what the dried flowers would be in summer. The first tree to bloom in March was a Serviceberry along with hordes of narcissus that someone had planted behind the old spring house.
The lack of light pollution provided the gift of stars, constellations, and galaxies. The wind raged as if to do its own spring-cleaning. Rains were followed by wisps of clouds rising from the valleys like misty spirits. Deer were dark in winter, and the squirrels came back and back to their stored hickory nuts and busied themselves with making nests signaling that winter would eventually wear itself out.
Initially, we thought we would develop things slowly. I hoped to renovate buildings already here that could be turned into a suitable place for writing. We started cleaning out the old granary and he 1940's farmhouse which would have to be torn down. It had been damaged by animals and weather after a large tree fell on one side, opening it to the elements.
Traylor wanted to start building right away so we would have a house to sleep in when we were here, but the first thing we needed was a farm road to provide access to all aspects of the land. There was the low land with the grassy stream and a tobacco field, the open bowl, several wooded acres and a wide highland hayfield. Getting from one area to another took too long on foot for walking to be efficient, so Traylor bought a truck.
We met with land movers and decided to cut into the slope of the hill nearest Young Road to keep from building the road through the old tobacco field which we reserved for crops like the pumpkins that would grow there in years to come. We wanted to follow the old farm road and cow paths and then curve around the rim of the bowl to the highland hay field for access.
We first decided that the house site would be on a flat spot in the wooded area overlooking Young and Sussex, behind a few trees so it would be private and unseen from the road. This would change radically before we started building, but we added a dog tail of gravel road down to that site between stands of mountain laurel and rhododendron. And, Traylor had an idea for a water-feature. He wanted to turn the lowest, boggy vale into a pond.
We entrusted the pond and the road to the only man we found who had created a pond from scratch before. He was so excited about working on a tractor without a shirt that we should have worried more about his concern for the land. He was like a boy playing in the dirt and like an adolescent, spent an unnatural amount of time looking at himself in the side mirror of his truck preening his growing beard. What became clear was that he loved playing with our dirt and getting paid. We felt that we were responsible for taking care of the land and sharing it with others as stewards, but we were not there while he did the initial grading, and when I saw the first scathing cut, I cried. There was no going back.
And, we learned not to rush the local workers. Mountain time is a real phenomenon and a pushy "flatlander" is never appreciated by the locals. In March, folks are just starting to come out, women still quilting near the fireplace and men anticipating the next snow. March was hardest to take. It just seemed like winter would never end. Here a bloom, there a bloom, some gradual greening, but we were told not to plant because there would be another frost, maybe even a hard freeze. Just wait, they said, so we waited. The last week of March is...the...longest, still waiting for spring. Come on, April, you tease!
There were five homes on Young Road in what they call Young Hollow. Kenneth and Mary are at the end of that road and Granny Young nearby. Some of the homes belong to Walters who are related to both the Young family and the Waddell family (who we bought from.) Pauline Walters was our closest neighbor and her sons, Johnny, Eddie and Larry, and a daughter JoAnn (Phillips) were nearby. All were eager to help us settle in and learn about the fauna and flora and would help with anything we asked.
The natural surroundings had such appeal even in winter. I couldn't wait to see what the dried flowers would be in summer. The first tree to bloom in March was a Serviceberry along with hordes of narcissus that someone had planted behind the old spring house.
The lack of light pollution provided the gift of stars, constellations, and galaxies. The wind raged as if to do its own spring-cleaning. Rains were followed by wisps of clouds rising from the valleys like misty spirits. Deer were dark in winter, and the squirrels came back and back to their stored hickory nuts and busied themselves with making nests signaling that winter would eventually wear itself out.
Initially, we thought we would develop things slowly. I hoped to renovate buildings already here that could be turned into a suitable place for writing. We started cleaning out the old granary and he 1940's farmhouse which would have to be torn down. It had been damaged by animals and weather after a large tree fell on one side, opening it to the elements.
Traylor wanted to start building right away so we would have a house to sleep in when we were here, but the first thing we needed was a farm road to provide access to all aspects of the land. There was the low land with the grassy stream and a tobacco field, the open bowl, several wooded acres and a wide highland hayfield. Getting from one area to another took too long on foot for walking to be efficient, so Traylor bought a truck.
We met with land movers and decided to cut into the slope of the hill nearest Young Road to keep from building the road through the old tobacco field which we reserved for crops like the pumpkins that would grow there in years to come. We wanted to follow the old farm road and cow paths and then curve around the rim of the bowl to the highland hay field for access.
We first decided that the house site would be on a flat spot in the wooded area overlooking Young and Sussex, behind a few trees so it would be private and unseen from the road. This would change radically before we started building, but we added a dog tail of gravel road down to that site between stands of mountain laurel and rhododendron. And, Traylor had an idea for a water-feature. He wanted to turn the lowest, boggy vale into a pond.
We entrusted the pond and the road to the only man we found who had created a pond from scratch before. He was so excited about working on a tractor without a shirt that we should have worried more about his concern for the land. He was like a boy playing in the dirt and like an adolescent, spent an unnatural amount of time looking at himself in the side mirror of his truck preening his growing beard. What became clear was that he loved playing with our dirt and getting paid. We felt that we were responsible for taking care of the land and sharing it with others as stewards, but we were not there while he did the initial grading, and when I saw the first scathing cut, I cried. There was no going back.
And, we learned not to rush the local workers. Mountain time is a real phenomenon and a pushy "flatlander" is never appreciated by the locals. In March, folks are just starting to come out, women still quilting near the fireplace and men anticipating the next snow. March was hardest to take. It just seemed like winter would never end. Here a bloom, there a bloom, some gradual greening, but we were told not to plant because there would be another frost, maybe even a hard freeze. Just wait, they said, so we waited. The last week of March is...the...longest, still waiting for spring. Come on, April, you tease!
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