This morning, around 7:00 AM, I took Roxy down to the mailbox with me - it's on the main hightway, about 100 yards down my driveway. About 3/4 of the way to the road, in the middle of the yard, there's a rusted, overgrown, antique piece of farm machinery ...
I like to believe that this hulking, delapidated skeleton was once hitched behind a horse and worked the fields in back of my house. If you look closely at it, as I have, you will see evidence of strain and wear, missing teeth and chipped tines. And if you listen you can hear the "Hup! Hup!" from some long-ago summer morning, the farmer urging on a broadchested Morgan through the reawakening land.
I don't know who painted the seat blue, or when - it's really much more gaudy than this picture would lead you to believe, an odd eccentricity that pleases me no end.
I've resisted all efforts to have it declared as junk and hauled away. It is, I suppose, junk. But hard work over generations should lead to a dignified, sedate retirement, and it warms me to provide just that for this old soul.
Roxy waited by the machinery as I went to pick up the newspaper. It was a chilly morning; 2 degrees C, or 37 degrees Fahrenheit. A clear, cloudless night meant a heavy front had settled on the land. At my mailbox, it still clung to the grass, bushes, and trees, its cold fingers yet to be pried off by the first warm rays of autumn sun.
I love early morning in the fall. The leaves are only now starting their change. In a week or two this Island will be a Wonderland of incredible colours. I only hope my camera - and my skills - are up to the challenge.
I'm a sucker for fall colours, and water and shoreline does it for me, too ...
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