RIDING DRAG: April 2013

Friday, April 5, 2013

RIDING DRAG / SPRING CLEANING

Rainy days force us inside after chores and give us a dose of cabin fever. Being trapped inside also forces us to take a good look at our surroundings and take stock of our collected clutter. Accumulated across the winter months when we voluntarily spend more time inside this collection suddenly begins to surround us. We feel penned in and stare longingly outside; but the rain is falling steadily and there is still a chill on the air. We turn back to the mess and make the monumental decision to clean house. I am not talking about the usual cleaning that goes on where we dust a little, run the vacuum and wipe down the bathroom. I am talking about the kind of house cleaning that includes clearing shelves, washing them down and getting rid of half of what we pulled out in the first place.

I love junk. I am, without shame, a junkaholic. I love trinkets and knick-knacks, photos and glassware, Cowboy and Native American bits and pieces. If the article has family history attached, all the better. I won’t even go into books and other printed word pieces and how they fill up space around here. (I vaguely remember a table beneath the pile of books beside my chair.)

My good intentions are side-tracked by the sheer volume of it all. I find myself in the spare room sitting on the floor slowly going through a box of articles, school papers, photos and programs from my kids’ formative years. I know why I saved them; because my mother and grandmother saved things like this for me. They kept scrapbooks for each of us and though I thought them silly at the time they are treasure now. At times in my life when I thought myself an utter failure I could go through them and see what I had accomplished. Notes written here and there among the articles, etc. served to remind me that I was loved, that they were proud of me and that I was special.

No, I did not get the house truly clean. The stack of books still towers next to my chair, there are still vet supplies in my kitchen cabinets and half consumed boxes of crackers in the pantry. But I do have four scrapbooks fairly underway and more than half of the things in the box now pasted to pages. Hopefully they will find these books about them as valuable as I found mine. Memories versus a clutter-free environment…priorities people, priorities.

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*For more information on Debra Coppinger Hill go to the poetry section at AlwaysCowboy.com

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RIDING DRAG with DEBRA COPPINGER HILL is featured each week at ALWAYS COWBOY where Debra is a Resident Western Poet. Join her and her Cowboy Friends for Cowboy Poetry, News & Events. http://alwayscowboy.net/debra_coppinger_hill_poetry.html

RIDING DRAG - LET IT RAIN

The first foal of the year hit the ground yesterday evening with the dramatic background sound of thunder. Chief’s first night in this world was accompanied by lightning, heavy rain and a little hail. Though we hate to see a new baby out in this kind of weather his mother is not fond of being in the barn, much preferring to tough it out in the open. So he was welcomed to the 4DH in the midst of an Oklahoma thunderstorm.

I suppose we should have been praying for clear weather but instead we were cheering for as much rain as would come down. The last few years of dry weather have left our pastures suffering. Hay comes at a premium and we find ourselves hauling it from Colorado to supplement the ever increasing lack of locally grown hay. We are thankful for a little rain and even more thankful for the kind of rain we got last night.

We are a long way from being at normal moisture levels here in Oklahoma. Every drop that we can get we need all the way across the state. Today, while working on the tack building roof my son said “Dad, the pasture sure looks green this year.” Everyone paused to look and appreciate.

I know rain can become a problem when it comes down in torrents and floods the land. What we have needed for a very long time is a good soaking rain and we have been receiving exactly that. The thunder and lightning are just a show added to the rain for our enjoyment. We do not control the weather; not the drought or the rain. Having suffered the first, we are glad for the second as it spills down from the sky and fills our terraces, ponds and creek. Things are looking up here in North East Oklahoma.

And what about the new-baby Chief? He spent this day splashing circles around his mother in a joyous dance that cried out “Let it rain!”