Spring!

It's about a month early but Spring has come to Kentucky. The temperatures are hitting the 80 degree mark and the weeds are growing before your eyes. It's way too early for this to be happening and the extreme temperatures have also spawned some extreme storms. The tornadoes that ripped through this area spared us but destroyed so much in other places. So far our only major damage has been a tree just behind the house that was struck by lightning. The venerable old maple now sports a black stripe down its massive trunk and dirt clumps thrown up around it where the lightning ran down the roots and literally blew the sod up. Time will tell whether it is strong enough to survive.

Everywhere you look things are blooming. The first were the daffodils that sprinkle the front field. It wasn't long until the pear trees down the drive were in glowing white. Today I discovered that I even have an early tulip. Along with the warm temperatures and unsettled weather has come lots of rain. March is typically a wet month and this is certainly no exception. The yard is squishy with standing water in the low spots. Where we have weaned calves and kept them in a smaller lot to teach them to eat feed, they have churned the ground to a bottomless goo. Likewise where the cattle have come to the waterers in the fields it is now the consistency of quicksand. Once when someone asked how many acres we had and I had responded with the number, hubby looked at me hard and pointed out that I had cut out two acres. "Not so", I replied, " I figure I have mopped at least two acres of mud out of my utility room!"

I was in the kitchen last night when another rite of spring appeared. The door burst open and a tearful five year old came in with a downcast wail. "My daddy is going to be so mad. Justin made me do it and now daddy is going to be so mad." (Justin being the 14 yr. old brother). I turned from the sink and had to laugh. Standing in the doorway was a small boy that appeared to be carved out of mud. He had mud in his hair, on his face, down the front and caked to his back. "Did you fall down? No? Then how did you get so muddy?" "Playing basketball", he replied.

Between chuckles over his predicament, reassurances that he wasn't in trouble, and scraping the mud off him I kept quizzing him on how he became a human mud ball. It seems that he and the older brother were playing basketball in front of the barn. Every time the ball left the blacktop it landed in mud. Passes that weren't caught left a basketball shaped muddy spot on where they hit. Hence the large muddy spot on his shoulder and face. Then, since the field slopes steeply just off the drive, missed shots tended to roll down the slope and under the fence. Big brother was sending the little one to retrieve the balls and since he was too little to open the gate he was scooting under the plank fence. Also, since the cattle had walked the fence repeatedly to get to the waterer, that area was close to being a mud wrestling arena.

After getting him cleaned up and settled on the porch with a snack (no way was he sitting down in my house) I turned to take this up with the older brother. However, it seems he had decided that helping his dad and grandfather clean out the barn might be better than sticking around and facing a discussion about responsible kid-watching.

Yep. It is definitely Spring in Kentucky.