Syndication--of a sort

After a lengthy hiatus, your author returns to his blog--following some choice off-script colorful descriptive language--#!!*&--regarding lost passwords, lost lost sign in accounts and so forth.  Savvy and computer are incompatible in this particular case.  The last post on our blog was a few days before Winter Solstice, 2019--from which the date of Christmas is derived three days afterward.  The hope of light and peace in an otherwise darkened world.  We will begin there.

 Crack of Dawn over the Clearwater Range, Winter Solstice, 2019 

Christmas Eve was a small celebratory affair.  Our son and his charming fiance came down to the farm for dinner.  My wife and I are more or less quasi empty-nesters.  Our daughters are in careers away from our rural haunts.  But our son has taken up his grandfather's place, only a rifle shot from our farm...hence quasi empyt-nesters. 

2019, Christmas Eve dinner at the W Farm

The photo shows the spirit of the evening--a 2019 Kichoman Loch Gorm, crafted from only 20 oloroso sherry butts (15,000 bottles released to world market--er, make that 14,999).  The photo is for the benefit of a gentleman, Mr. Scott Copeland of Texas (about whom more later).  It seems Mr. Copeland wrongly alleges that I am in his debt by one bottle of scotch.  How he ever came to that conclusion (or rather delusion) is well beyond my capacity to translate Texan.  A strange language, that. 

Anyhow, Christmas morning did not find what might be considered a more typical cover of deep snow cover.  Indeed, we were able to work the ground relatively late in the season, ripping some furrows (seen in photo) to break it up in preparation for apple transplants in the Spring.

Christmas morning 2019--Buffalo Hump and The Gospels Wilderness in background

What was certainly out of character for our weather was a fog which rolled over the morning.  If your author were a superstitious fellow, perhaps that was a foreboding.  Who'da thunk it ?  Christmas found some items under the tree for the pending 2020 Easter trip to Orkney...headlamps, for example, to explore the inner recesses of several Neolithic tombs on Orkney. 
   

Christmas Day 2019--Idaho County

The good Lord had other plans.  The hiatus in posts hereon, can perhaps be hinged upon the advent of the novel coronavirus which wrapped itself around the world scene unawares in December, and has yet to release its constrictive coils.  But, that would be a convenient excuse.  As such, it'll do.

What this COVID-19 viral snake did do was to total our 2020 Easter sojourn to Scotland's Orkney Islands, now postponed to Easter 2021 (and possibly even later).  If a complaint is to be had, it would be that much (most) of our transportation modes were already prepaid.  And several (like ScotRail and commuter flights with LoganAir in Scotland) are unrecoverable.  So it goes.

Incidentally, our Idaho snows came in late March, 2020--after we knew for certain that our flights and hotels were closed down. The photo is of "the" birdhouse on our drive.  Much like our annual Easter pilgrimage to Scotland, every year swallows and western bluebirds fight it out for several weeks over who has the right to rent this specific "summer vacation" abode.  These days, the swallows have the upper wing. 

March 25, 2020--the "War Zone" bird house

If truth were told, the hiatus from posting is more to be laid upon work here on "The W" than on the coronavirus.  Work caught up with us--everything from tilling two significant vegetable gardens, to planting a new 1/3 acre apple orchard.

Regarding those apples, we had arranged in a very tight schedule to pick up our "orchard in a box"--100 bare root fruit tress from Van Well's in Wenatchee, Washington on April 17 the day after we expected to land--had the original "Orkney plan" carried through.  From the Seattle international return flight out of Dublin and the connector to Spokane, we planned to overnight at Spokane and then drive out to Wenatchee to fetch the trees, before returning to the labors of the farm.

No respite for the wicked it is said.  And so, instead of exploring Neolithic tombs, Iron Age Brochs, hopping island ferries, touring scotch distilleries and enjoying incredible fresh haddock, 2020 rewarded us with...just farm work.  That's not necessarily a complaint, mind you.  Well, okay.  It is.  But it is also a labor not just of love but of fulfillment.

April 18, 2020--100 bare root fruit trees 

April 18, 2020--north side of the orchard; Camas Prairie Rail trestle in background

 
As to complaints, I return to the gentleman from Texas.  It seems Mr. Copeland is pleading with me to write a weekly piece on politics from the lens of our "pastoral bowers" here in Idaho.  Curiously, the gentleman wishes to post this proposed commentary on his CP-Texas newsletter.  I remain hesitant to do so, being unsure of the audience.  I cannot imagine Texas being much interested in following comments by a guy in Idaho.

But just to test the gentleman's theory (and ignoring his claims upon my scotch) I will put this up as the first edition, under a syndicated by line--"It Occurs to Me."  In any case, the following photo shows pretty much what it's all about here on "The W".

June 14, 2020--rainbow between our apple saplings and our son's place on the ridge

       

Peace.