Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Abrasive Water

One of my least favorite farm chores is cleaning out the water trough. I know I have mentioned it before. It gets green algae that is hard to get completely off since I don't want to use bleach.

Since it has been so wet and muddy from the snow melt, I didn't want to add to the mud by dumping the water from the trough so I waited as long as I could. When I scrub out the trough the water gets so green that I can't see how I am doing so I have to dump and then rinse. I hate to bring over more water from a rain barrel and go through the process again, so today I used snow to scrub. Interesting, "Abrasive Water". It really worked a lot better. Too bad snow isn't around more often.

I have been spreading sand (remember the over estimate from the sandbag project?) around the barnyard to help with the mud and it occurred to me that sand is very abrasive and might work as well. Make a note: use sand to clean the trough.

As a writer, as I see and do things, I think about these things in terms of there interest for written material and the language to use. I am sure Karen is more keenly aware of all subtle smells and tastes after making so many varieties of goat cheese and wine. As we walked across the Washington and Lee Campus tonight, John stopped to touch and knock on a gigantic column to see how it was put together and what it was made of. Gail probably looks at life from more angles than most considering the gazillion photographs she has taken. I would love to see life with the complexity that I imagine Lyndy sees it.
I have probably told the story of giving my mom water colors for her birthday when she was bored in her last years. She said she wasn't a painter but I told her even if she didn't actually paint she could look at things as if she was going to paint them and see things differently than she ever had. That is the extra we get out of the physical things we do.

I wonder if others think my choice of things to write about is weird.

1 comment:

  1. Not at all weird. Certainly thought provoking at times. And you are writing.

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