February 27, 2012

The old red barn

The old red barn


When I was a kid, we kept a horse in this barn, an appaloosa. I’d go out early in the morning on a winter day to bring her a coffee can of sweetfeed, a flat of hay, and a red bucket of water that had to be awkwardly lugged from the tap in our cellar. When I mucked out her stall, I’d fill a wheelbarrow with manure to toss into the compost pile, a heap that grew so warm that snakes loved to curl up there on cool spring days.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Looks like it's been through some weather!

jo(e) said...

Did blogger change the comment format again? Weird.

Mary Stebbins Taitt said...

What a nice memory! I did my first master's thesis ont he free ranging appaloosas. So pretty.

Phil said...

Well, THAT's why you can write and I can't. That picturesque rural east which is indispensable to good literature. ;-)

When was the last time the canoe felt water on its keel?