I'm back--hopefully

Well, I admit it. I disappeared from the blogosphere. Completely. It has been months and I haven't even opened this blog page once. I didn't even know how long it had been. I have been busy. Honest. And maybe not in the mood. But today, I am back.

Let me explain...the last time I posted it was right before Aidan's birthday. So there was the birthday. And that happens at planting time, so there was planting, digging and hauling of compost to be done. And then I went to Brazil for a couple of weeks so there was the getting ready for the trip, the trip and the recovering from the trip. (It's a big trip!) And then right on the heels of Brazil was THE WEDDING. The wedding took weeks to get ready for and recover from. And in those weeks there was also the family reunion--FUN. Loved that. Though I did feel SUPER guilty about how hard the wedding ended up working everyone. I really didn't get that in advance and I apologize in reverse.

And then there was catching up from the wedding and reunion and the trip...meaning my garden went to hell from neglect. And then there was a busy summer full of day camp (not that I do any of the work but it does mean a LOT of extra people in my space all the time). And then school started and I was still trying to salvage my garden and fill our pantry and freezer. Did the latter two but the garden is just a mess. One big pile of buttercups. (See the previous post if you want an explanation.)

So that leaves me here, today. Ready to be back. And with not much to say except one big whiney apology. Can you forgive me? Hope so.

The most exciting thing that has happened lately (besides everything I was whining about up there) is the cow went on walkabout. Steve went to feed her yesterday morning and NO Brigid. Now this is a girl who LOVES her food. I have seen her literally charge down a pasture to get a handful of greens that are dangling over the fence. She loves to eat.

So let's just say she has never, ever missed breakfast before. When she didn't show up, Steve was alarmed. He trekked all over heck and gone (meaning through the blackberries and woods) as fast as he could (he was rapidly getting late for work) and couldn't find her. Naturally I was appointed relief chief cow catcher.

I wasn't too worried for some reason and I had a LOT of things already on my list so I decided to let her wander home on her own and give her a few hours to do so. I adopted this attitude partly because I know how hard it is to get her to do anything she doesn't already agree to and I figured if she was dining in the woods, she wasn't going to leave until she was done.

After I got back from my 347 errands and things to do on the official 'things to do list', I ate lunch and went a looking. First I looked from the car because before when she has jumped the fence she has found her way through the woods and onto our neighbor's lawns. I don't think they like that too much. These neighbors are also far enough away it is much quicker to look by vehicle than on foot. She wasn't anywhere to be found on the road back through the woods, so I came home put on my big blackberry-proof boots and headed out into the woods to look. First of course, looking to see if she was back. She was not.

I traipsed through all kinds of thickets and brambles and open spots of woods (ahhh). But of course, NO COW! I had visions of search and rescue teams fanning out in the 2 million acres of woods that are adjacent to our house and of never finding the cow. My imagination was going wild. The more arduous the walk through the blackberries became, the more dramatic my imaginings were. Let's just say I came up with some pretty amazing scenarios...including rescuing cows by helicopters for one.

After a LONG time, I was just about to give up. I went back to the barn to give Mattie a great big hello (she was standing in her stall quite happily) when who should poke her innocent nose out of the other barn door and peer at me with those big brown eyes of hers--Brigid.. And to tell you the truth she was looking much more ornery than innocent.

I guess I can say alls well that ends well but honestly cows can be worse than goats sometimes.