April 7, 2024
Sunday Feasts
Sunday morning started off right, with coffee and homemade French toast topped with peaches and syrup. Amen.
I knew it was going to be a good day when the end of one meal started the preparation of the next. After breakfast, my wife put a large pork butt to cook while I wrestled with sync issues between Scrivener and Dropbox. After a few chores inside the house, we changed clothes and went into the woods to do battle, rakes in hand.
The next two hours consisted of two actions: pull the rake, toss the foliage to the side of the trail. It was hard work. Because the morning was cold, I had several layers of clothing on, none of which were necessary. The repetition of movements provided a challenging workout, as I had to rake leaves and pine needles while navigating a trail covered with roots just below the surface of the dirt. This caused the rake’s teeth to catch on most every stroke. While the work was hard, we made our way down the trails faster than anticipated. After two hours, we felt whooped and in need of some water. I also needed to shed several pieces of clothing. We still had a lot of work to do, but we planned to knock out the other trails little by little.
We arrived back at the house famished, and my clothes were soaked with sweat. The pork my wife put to cook was ready, and she fried up some corn tortillas while I made more guacamole. Then we made tacos using the tortillas, shredded pork, guacamole, tomatoes, sriracha, and fresh lime juice. I sprinkled on an unhealthy amount of seasoning my wife recently purchased, made of salt, cilantro, lime, and red pepper flakes. I looked at the label, but it did not say crack cocaine, but the stuff was so addictive, that I was sure it was a key ingredient. Lunch was phenomenal, and I felt a little sad when the last bite of taco slid down my gullet. Those were the grim times when having an amazing partner paid off. I looked up and my wife was pulling freshly baked cookies out of the oven. There were dark chocolate cookies, some plain, some with coconut, and others with toasted marshmallows. Damn, it feels good to be a gangster.
Lunch was followed by that duty, if not doody, of every unsung dog owning hero out there. The ceremonial picking up of the poop. After, we gathered trash and recycling and made a quick trip to the trash service center. When we arrived home, I was exhausted. Between the manual labor and enormous meal, laziness settled in, getting the best of me. I fell asleep on the couch, with my head resting on Bodhi’s hindquarters. He kept moving, so that meant one of us had to go. I found the floor adequately comfortable.
When I woke up, my wife was studying out in the pasture. I walked out there, wary of the bees in the flowered field. A bee stung the underside of my toe a week ago, and I was still dealing with the itching and swelling, barely able to bend my toe. Trying to bend it both hurt and drove my wife crazy, so of course I had to keep doing it. We walked around the pasture together, fixing wire from the electric fence the deer had broken. Within a few minutes, we had the fence looking like new.
Because food dominated our lives, we made a trip to the Piggly Wiggly in Bailey where we picked up two marbled ribeyes and more wood pellets for the smoker. Several years ago, almost by accident, we left some ribeyes on the smoker for several hours, which to our surprise, came out tasting like meaty bacon. Now, smoked ribeye tacos was one of our favorite meals.
While the ribeyes sat in the smoker, my wife and I relaxed on the porch sipping on cold beer, talking, and having fun. We slipped into the forest with Axel, checking out the progress we made on clearing the trails. Axel needed to burn some energy, and we just wanted to be out in the woods we loved so much. While admiring the clean trail, a large blue heron flew right over us. We came back home, pulled the ribeyes off the Traeger and cut them up. I heated tiny corn tortillas on the hot grill and then we sat down inside the house for an amazing meal.
After dinner, I went back into the woods for last light, making my way with a small folding chair, settling in on top of Beaver Tooth Rock. The day had been sunny and warm, but the coolness of early spring was drifting in, permeating the air with a crisp coolness. As the sun lowered itself from the sky, the forest went dark and green and mysterious. I sat quickly with my eyes closed in a deep meditative state. The weekend was over and tomorrow, a new adventure would begin. I sensed changes were in the air, as if they ever really stopped. I gathering my things and made my way through the blackened forest, feeling the buzz of my watch. A delivery person was at my front door. A late delivery. What could that be?
When I arrived home, my wife was still in the bathtub soaking. On our front porch sat two large boxes, each holding a very fancy hammock. I carried the boxes through the house and set them on the back porch. When my wife came out, we put one of them together and promptly broke it in. We snapped together the stand for the hammock, which was made of a beautiful white woven cloth and a bamboo frame. It was the nicest hammock I had ever seen.
I went to shower, washing off a day of hard work and play. Meanwhile, my wife took a blanket outside and lied underneath the stars in the hammock, taking in the cold air after a hot bath. By the time I was ready for bed, she was already sound asleep in our bedroom. The weekend left us feeling exhausted and complete.