The new foal

The fact is I think I have been sleeping for a long while. It happens like this, the horse has her foal and then suddenly I wake up again. It is as though for all that time I have been in a state of hibernation, but I think I would call it a state of deep anxiety. Every time my horse foals I swear that I will never put her through this again, but who is going through this anxiety ... not her.

The foal is born. This time I was there minutes after and found the foal with its amazingly worryingly uneven hooves not even bothering to get up. Her head was up, she looked around with such an intense curiosity that I was amazed that such a new being could be so interested in her surroundings.

It was raining, my mare had selected a nice muddy patch of the paddock to foal, she was not even inside the shelter with the deep pile of softness under hoof.

Later the foal attempts to get up, we stand and watch from a distance, we cheer for her when she finally makes it, then we hold our breath until she finds her mother's udder. Then we hold our breath again because we have to watch for the first pooh to fall. All of this has to be reported to the veterinarian.

It is only a day later when the veterinarian comes to give the foal her first tetanus shot. I hold the foal around her chest and the vet holds up her tail, it is amazingly easy and the foal stands still after I have learned the correct way to block her. She had bounced twice, an automatic response and then she was still, I stroked her shoulder as she stood there like a horse that had been held a thousand times before. But it is her mother who is snuffling and mumbling at her nose to nose and the foal is quiet in my arms.

"Did she suckle?" asks the vet. I pull out my notes. Everything is written down in the order it happened, time of birth, first time on four legs, first meal, first pooh. The vet stays to watch while the little foal suckles.

Now we have the problem of the name. I had first remarked about how joyful this little creature was, and so we decided to call her gioiosa, because I am living in Italy. Everyone starts to call her by this name, but they do not know me and naming. She is now called Paprika, much to the surprise of all those who are now calling her gioiosa, and this is only to content the people who are desperate for a name. I used to be like them.

I know in my heart that I will not have a good name for the foal until she herself  'tells' me. She grows up, I watch her, I try different names and then one day she walks towards me when I have called the name I think she must like the best. At least this is how it was with the other foal, Nutmeg. There is of course the chance that, with all the name calling, the young animal discovers that the best way to shut me up is to walk towards me.

I watch my mare as she walks around her foal, protecting her from the leaned over tree, from the electric fencing. It is time for my mare to eat and I am bring her a bucket full of feed. I lead them both across the paddock to the large, airy open box with the manger full of hay and the feed bucket. The foal does not want to enter. She only just came out into the light and now she is to go back into the dark. She makes her high-pitched tiny whinny in protest. Mother horse goes out and brings her in circling her and huffing and snuffing at her.

As an Appaloosa the foal will need a name for her registration papers. There are six spaces, first choice and five others and then if the horse club does not like any of those names they will select one for you. I now have three of the names I need to fill the boxes, combining the name of the dam and the sire.

It may be that this foal will end up with the stable name Paprika. I chose it because of her reddish coat color, but the vet has already told me she will turn white. I also chose the name because of the wonderful two-day ride I went on with two now departed friends and their horses, one was called Paprika. It brings to mind the landscape, the rivers, the litres of coffee we drank, their sweet, amused friendship. I rode in a state of total wonder, but that is how it always is when I am in the saddle.

I will need to wait to see what color this foal decides to be. After all Nutmeg was a bay and then at three or four she decided it was time to lighten her mane and tail and put on a spattering of snowflakes over her copper colored hide.

The name I suppose will have to wait, there is still time.

Friends in passing, Tramonti di Sotto, 21 February 2014

I don’t know when it occurred to me that I might always have been moving from county-to-country, from town-to-town so that I would never get to know anyone well enough to have to go to their funeral. 

Now i live in a small town and I have already been to two funerals. One was for Nonna who was our neighbor and was 94 when she died a couple of weeks after her birthday party. Today was the funeral of a neighbor’s mother, who I had never met.

I realize, in the end, we go to a funeral for ourselves, for memories, for love, for friendship, and for the people who remain standing around the grave. I was reminded of my father’s funeral, the soldier playing the last post on his trumpet, the golden light. Uncle Eddie standing behind us and telling us to leave before our father’s coffin was covered. “It is too final,” he said. Then the wake at our house after the funeral when all the people came. “Come like a wedding,” said the butcher man.

They had looked all over Jamaica for a Union Jack to drape over our father’s coffin. In the end they draped a Jamaican flag. A soldier was there who told me that our father was the best commander that he had ever had. It reverberated to think that someone knew Daddy before I was born and, seeing his name in the paper, had come to pay his respects. I only wish that I had listened better when he told me his name and shook my hand.

Where I live now, there are about 420 residents. The small church is full. Maybe half of us are here. The rest still at work somewhere in the valley. A small boy looks up at me from an upside down position. He hangs by one arm from the back of a pew. Candles have been lit, I think of lighting candles for friends who have recently died in Jamaica. In the church, the pale pink and white flowers remind me of weddings and spring time. Small bunches of flowers are thrown into the grave. Again I think of weddings and spring time, not funerals and death.

The mountains surround the cemetery where we stand. I love these rugged, silent sentinels, the cloud mothers. I see their summits are blanketed. Where we stand it is sunny and warm after all the rain. I know that in the morning, when the clouds have lifted from the peaks, there will be a fresh layer of snow. 

Leaving the cemetery we pass Nonna’s tomb. The Bear touches her image briefly and crosses himself. I look at her and remember how she always invited me to come and talk to her, even without the Bear, and how I had always felt too shy to go. She spoke Friulano. The Bear says she spoke the old way, and that even he had difficulty following what she said. He would go to talk to her to learn, to practice this old language. As I look at the photo I am aware of a spark of pure joy? My spirit lifts, as though I have received a message from across time. 

“This is not the end,” I hear, “only the beginning of yet another journey.”

Burano and bees

Thursday 6 June 2013

My friend Plod and her husband Turtle came to Italy, Venice for a surprise birthday gift to Plod. I hauled Big Bear out of hibernation and took him on a train and a boat to visit them. They were not in Venice, they were on one of the islands staying at a hotel, or an agri-tourism.

We arrived at the train stationVenice, Santa Lucia, and neither Big Bear or myself (Thickness) had the address of the hotel, I suppose each had expected the other to bring the piece of paper I had written on in pastel-coloured pencil. Big Bear remembered I had sent the address to him, so we were able to find it searching his email stored on his cell phone.

Since the hotel was on an island, it meant walking a fair distance to the vaporetto, we did not mind. We had been stuck in the house waiting for the rain to stop, and on the Wednesday we visited Venice we had a resplendent glorious day. We stopped for coffee and I was surprised to find a regular coffee costs the same as it does at the bar around the corner.

We found the vaporetto and took a short ride out to Burano. Again we were lost and our friends found us in the huge vegetable garden behind the hotel. We had been gently advised by a local not to try to go in the front entrance, dressed as we were directly from the mountains and me wearing my hiking boots. 

We went for lunch at Al Gatto Nero, and were treated very well. It may have helped that Big Bear speaks Veneto and was able to order for us. It turned out as the lunch progressed that the owner could speak fluent English, heavily accented with an Edinburgh, Scottish accent. We ate mostly fish and then finally scampi, because this was Penny's favourite. It had just been delivered and was brought to our table so we could smell how fresh it was.

Plod and I have known each other since we were four years old, a long time. It is always as though we just saw each other yesterday and we pick up from there. "Do you remember?" She says, and I am reminded of how Plod has always been my memory. And then we say, "We must do this more often". Why don't we? We don't know. We talk of anything and nothing. Flit from one subject flower to another like butterflies sipping nectar. 

Which reminds me of the bees.

We went to visit them today. In one hive we found the queen bee with her tiny bright yellow dot, and the workers are all busy building up the cells in the honey store box to fill with honey. We didn't find the queen in the other hive, and the bees are busy dismantling the wax in the frames in the honey box. We find discarded wax on the metal floor of the drawer we pull out to clean.

We are beginners, and must now call the expert to find out what he thinks. We are only now able to easily identify the drones from the workers. We can identify the cells where more drones are waiting to hatch. We recognize the honey store, and where the pollen is kept. We find queen cells and leave them in the hope a new queen develops and that she and the drones remember to return to their hive after the wedding.

The only way to learn about bees is to experience, to pull out the frames one by one and look carefully, observe. 

I find that still I am learning this last ... to observe.

Of bees and horse

Saturday 25 May 2013

Snow on the mountain and rain all day.

First the bees and then the rain.

I go check the bees and only one flies out and immediately flies back inside. I imagine her tell the others it is only me with the dogs in the grey pouring rain.

On Thursday, we visited my horse at the clinic in Osoppo. I have owned her since she was six months old, she is now 13. Only on Thursday did I realize she answers to the name, Rose. One man is explaining that my horse's name is Mary Rose and my name is Rosemary. Everyone laughs and one says, "so I call her Rose."

Later, while my horse is waiting in a stable for yet another echogram I call her, "Rose". She has her back to me, drowsy on her feet. Suddenly she swings towards me with that expression that makes me think she is smiling. Or, is she laughing that it has taken me this long to learn her name?

 

What???
Twins? Horrors!!

When I have a new animal friend I call different names until they respond to one.  OK, so they come anyway after they have figured out that the noise I am making and the treat I am waiting to give them must mean "Come here".

However, as with a few of my horse-loving friends, the horse's name was not important. It is more our relationship with that horse, which is mainly wordless. This is what is most important. But finding that my horse answers to Rose, feels like a gift.

Why two echograms? During the first, the vet shows me the two dark globes, the embryos; bad news. They seem to be attached; more bad news. We wait, they move apart; better news. One has to be eliminated; bad news. We could wait to see if one is eliminated naturally; good news. But maybe when they move around they will attach and ... bad news.

So the second echogram was to see if the embryos had moved apart and if one could be easily eliminated. My horse is patient, the best, I am told. I stand with my head close to hers. I try to explain what we are doing, silently. No need, she doesn't want to know. Someone is giving her a hard treat to nibble on.

Last night I received another message from the vet. "Only one embryo". Relief, we are still pregnant.

Big Bear tells me all the tension went out of me when I received that message. Maybe he does not know how tense I can be while my horse is pregnant. I was not aware of this myself until I saw Rose's first and second foal standing beside her in the field. That strange unease drifted away and I understood that I had been hopelessly worried about my horse for a whole year.

Maybe this time will be different, this is Rose's third foal, or should I say ... our third.

Dog walk on a bicycle

15 May 2013

Nelly and the mountain
Taken 2012

I took the dogs for a walk, the buttercups are in bloom, shining in the sun, I had forgotten my camera and my cell phone. I will now have to wait, because I see the grey clouds are gathering again and the rain is about to fall.

I was riding my new, old, black and grey bike, leading Porgy the black dog. Nelly was out in front, she is always free running because I can trust her to come back when I call her name. When the dogs are running together, there is a point when they run shoulder to shoulder and I have to call them back, or they'll not return until they are ready.

If I call Porgy I will be ignored, but if I call Nelly she will turn around and come and ask me what all the fuss is about. Porgy can be counted on to return with her because he thinks he might be missing something.

I have found a bench, where I can watch the shadows of the clouds change the shapes of the mountains. I plan on taking a canvas there, but I don't know where my portable easel is, so I will take a sketch pad and make a series of sketches and then paint from the drawings. I usually do this. I prefer sketching to taking photos of landscape. I have discovered that a good photo does not always make a good painting, unless you take a photo 'like a painter paints' and then it may as well remain a good photo because it runs the risk of being copied.

Yesterday, I walked the other way, the usual dog walk, down the road to the end, across the field, turn right at the bench and walk to the end of the asphalt path. Turn left into another field, follow the path that seems to have been made by someone on a motorbike and then someone has crossed it wearing pointed feet. I bend to measure the tracks. They are as long as the first two joints of my index finger. I have seen where these creatures lay down, the shapes of their curled up bodies have been left in the grass. Only two, slightly apart in the long grasses.

I have to ask myself if they were there as I entered the field. Did they just get up and are they looking at me from the shelter of the newly leafed trees?

Once in the winter I followed the tracks of a large beast in the snow. He dragged a hind leg. At one point, looking down through the trees towards the river in the valley I am sure I saw him. Standing, silent and still as a tree. So still, I think I may have imagined his dark brown eye.

Horses will stand in the same way. Immobile they will watch you with a faintly amused expression in their eyes. I have caught them looking at me in this way when I enter a field and do not see them immediately, because they are Appaloosas and their dappled coats are invisible in the leafy shadows cast by the trees. At least this is how it was when I lived at Poggio.

When the dogs went for a second walk with the man I set about collecting vegetables in the garden. Bitter dandelion leaves, which I have just cooked, drained and will cook again with onion and hot pepper. My favourite is risotto made with stinging nettles.

Outside the top of my mountain is hidden in a grey cloud. Is this rain for tonight or will it rain all day tomorrow? The painting will have to wait.

A ramble

2 May 2013

Cherry blossom, Spilimbergo

If someone was to ask me what I have been doing with my time I might be hard pressed to explain. It is not as though I have a job that I go to everyday. I have a job that flies in at me from out of the blue, sometimes unexpectedly or else expected for a long time.

I work hard for a few days and then the job is over. Sometimes I am blessed with a supervisor who will answer all my questions within a reasonable time and will pay me as the job is handed in, or soon after. Once in a long while I have a supervisor that does not answer my questions about the particular document and does not acknowledge they have received the job. I am perplexed about the second type of supervisor. I am glad to say that this does not happen very often.

Squeaking about having to pay rent or buy food is useless. Experience has taught me that folks become huffy and angry, as though the needy person maybe telling lies about living on the edge of a precipice, or out of a paper bag.

Once I told someone in charge of payments that I needed urgent funds for a scuba-diving vacation. It just happened to be true, but it was not a vacation, it was an overnight in a hotel so that I could take my first diving exam with about 20 other people. I was amazed to see this person go through the stack of papers on her desk and pull out my payment form, which was at the bottom. Payment was effected immediately. I still wonder about this. If you need money to eat, people will look the other way, but if you need to do something frivolous, people will go out of their way to help you out. What does this say about us as a species? I am still trying to work this one out.

So, lately I have decided to add other strings to my bow; hence the bees. So we have gone to our classes and bought two hives. Our bee man told us to be prepared, to fill our honey store boxes with frames. I see that the wax sheets are already pressed with hexagonal patterns so the bees only have to build out from the template. This saves them time and energy. While we were engaged in attaching the waxy sheets to the frames we were accompanied by three wild bees that came to watch. Unfortunately I forgot to check the direction they flew when they hurried away as the sun set.

When the bee man is ready for us we will pick up the two brood boxes with the new bees, we will bring them home and set them up in a field on a ledge created with rocks and found objects. The hives will be set against a cut stone wall, falling down at one end. Tall pine trees stand behind the wall, which will protect the hives from the fierce north wind. The entrance to the hives will face the sun's path across the sky.

I worry that our bees won't have much to eat, which is why I have been going around photographing anything that looks like a flower in bloom to make sure it is bee friendly. Our bees will make honey from hundreds of different varieties of flowers. I was surprised to find how tasty dandelion honey is, although it may smell like dead socks to some people. This reminds me of Jackfruit and how it can stink like a pig sty until you have tasted it and then all you can smell and taste is wonder and magic.

Perhaps life is like this.

You think you are living a difficult moment, and then something happens to lift the veil, change your perspective; the dark clouds become bright sunny skies, the rain a rainbow and a frown a smile.

Suddenly we are surrounded by friends, magic, love, miracles and bees.

Liberation day in Italy

25 April 2013

Primulus veris (?)

Today is liberation day in Italy and we are all on holiday.

For a few days now I have been experiencing intense spring fever. This manifests as a great sleepiness and unease as I get used to the sudden change in climate.

All the blossoms are popping out on the trees and the mountains are touched with gold to light green where the deciduous trees are unfurling their leaves. I am confused and disoriented as we switch seasons when we go down to the plains where the season seems so far ahead of us who live up in the mountains.

There is a galloping explosion of colour in the gardens as we drive past on the way to and from the horse. Monte Rest is still showing signs of snow. My mountain outside my window has final touches of snow showing as faint memories.

We went to look at a pasture. I was the first up the lane and saw movement on my right side. All dressed in forest brown they stopped and stared at me and I at them. I recognized them as capriole (Capreolus capreolus) or roe deer in English. I was so excited to see them. I shouted "CAPRIOLE!!!!" I looked back down the lane to see Big Bear struggling pushing his bicycle through the long grass. "Hurry!" I yell at  him jumping up and down. Then I looked back and they were gone. Melted into the forest. I doubted that I had seen them at all.

Big Bear said he is VERY VERY angry with me. He thinks a bit and adds another VERY. He says it is the LAST time he goes on a fact finding mission with me ... unless I can promise to be as silent as a good hunting dog until given permission to bark. I cannot promise him.

I have been here almost ten months and it is only now that I am beginning to see the animals.

Once I was out on my own with the dogs. I turned to find what they were up to. Nothing, just dog stuff. But parallel to me, just behind my line of vision if I had continued to walk in a straight line, were muflone (Ovis musimon) mountain goats that are really sheep. I stopped, looked at them and they didn't even give me a chance to yell MUFLONE before they were gone.

Big Bear is a hunter and he suspects that I do not tell him when I see herds of animals, or even only their droppings. I do not tell him that I think he may be right.

In the winter, when the snow was still on the ground, after the first deep snowfall, I found the dainty prints of deer in the garden. There were two sets, they had braved the barking dogs to nibble, I suspect, on the sage that still poked above the snow.

Now we are celebrating spring. The cuckoo calls calming my spirit until I recall that these birds push other birds' eggs out their nest to lay their own. A young boy rides by on a motorbike, the neighbour saws wood outside his house. I know that Big Bear is trimming the branches off thin trees cut down earlier just before the sap began to rise. I should go and help.

If I go outside I may find the dogs sleeping. Porgy will be in the sun and hairy Nelly will be in the shade. Maybe the cats will be with them.

This morning I gathered Silene vulagaris for risotto. Dark green, soft to the touch leaves of a flowering wild plant. The stem snaps easily between my fingers as I gather a small bunch. The flavour is more delicate than asparagus.

Now I wish my horse was here, I am impatient for her arrival. I must not go to help trim possible fence posts.