Crotchety things

I have it on good authority that it is probably the crows eating the lemonades. I’ve had to pick the ripest ones and bring them inside. I am fond enough of the fruit to enter battle with the crows. They of course get their revenge by their crack of dawn arguments in the tree outside our bedroom window.

There are few sounds more insistent and irritating than a crow in full voice when the light is still blue and the household asleep.

My battles with the crows are fairly low-key scuffles. After all, neither my livelihood nor my daily food depends on beating the predators. I often give thanks for being able to live in the country without having to be dependent on it. I’m not even a gentlewoman farmer, just a frivolous dabbler around the edges of food production. I’m thrilled when I get to eat something we’ve grown but I do not depend on it in any way.

Through a chain of events, I realised today that I have been blogging for nearly two and a half years. A friend of mine recently redesigned her website and I wondered if I should do the same. Would it actually look fresh and inviting like hers or would it look like a desperate attempt on my part to hide my lack of writing?

And lack is what it is. My mother-in-law asked how work was going and laughed when I told her that I am frightened most of the time. Mothers-in-law sometimes do that. It is all new, all difficult, all stretching me in different directions. I feel like I only have a light grasp on what I am doing and that my skill-set is mutating as I speak. This can be a good thing but it’s certainly exhausting. I wish I could say that I wasn’t writing because I was reading, or growing food, nurturing my children, whipping up delicious meals or doing something else productive. The answer is much more simple. I’m just too tired at the moment.