(Spring is here at Refuge Farm. All photos Socotra.)

Is ten o’clock the neighborhood covenant on the discharge of shotguns?

I glanced at my left wrist to check the time, but of course why wear a watch down on the farm? When I arced back through the kitchen with the little bits I needed for the project, I checked the clock. It was a little after ten, suggestive that is the hour that marks the time appropriate to start blasting, while allowing the neighbors to sleep in.

I was on my second pot of coffee and all was right with the world. I had motored down to the farm, minutes ahead of the imposition of HOV-2 rules on the former passing lane on I-66. It was just enough to get by, and was able to be in the appropriate lane as network time turned over 14:59:59 before the restrictions kicked in.

It is sort of amazing what the people who chose to live out here have to put up with. In order to be in Haymarket before the highway constricts like a clogged arterial artery, they must start work- not the commute- by 0600.

I shuddered, and then got on with the increasingly pleasant drive as I swerved around the corner at RT 29, and drove down the hill at Buckland Mill where George Custer came a whisker of not being alive to be killed at the Little Big Horn. Everyone from the fifteen minutes when this was the most dangerous place on earth is dead. We have to remember for them, just as we are trying for Mac, whose merry band of brothers has left us now, too.

(Barn, with Bluesmobile).

I surveyed the property and had time to re-attack the company email, do time cards and start the massive load of laundry left over from the malarial chill-and-fever cycle. I started the Bluesmobile and ran it for about an hour to stay on top of the battery I just replaced- I have a trickle charger around someplace similar to the one that keeps the truck happy. Add to list.

It occurs to me I have to get the little black vehicle up north to have it checked out and seasonally adjusted- maybe next weekend. Add to list. I puttered, and found the project that was not going to get better without rapid and personal intervention. This is not going on the list. It is a current action item, since it is a clear falling hazard, and I am not doing that.

(A porch plank stages a revolt. Two carpenter’s nails give up the ghost.)

And later, the darkness coming on, I got as far on e-mail as I could stand and cooked up a mélange of local food from Croftburn Farms.

I did the best simulation of dancing I can do these days as I simmered. One of the best things about the farm is the lack of communal living. I can crank the music up as loud as I like and bother no one.

After I cooked, I was sitting out back looking up at the stars. The Big Dpper pointed the way North for the slave who was bold enough to follow it, bright and enticing. The heavens were doing the stately rotation that ignores our little lists. The Russians pulled in next door sometime in the full darkness. I could hear Biscuit the Wonder Spaniel barking in joy, announcing her presence to the darkness and some other dog further up the road toward Summerduck Run Farm.

I called out to her, and heard the muffled voices of the Russians telling her I was here. Then silence under the brilliant stars, unchallenged by the lights of the Imperial City, not a single political spin in their orbits.

It is funny. In a town where politics is business and vice versa, people get in the shower thinking talking points, and don’t stop until they collapse in their fancy eiderdowns at night, dreaming of more talking points and loopholes and concerned citizens in expensive suits.

I read for a while, never did get to any television. I mean, what is the point?

I had been so warm that when I went to bed I left the windows open and the fans on in the great room.

With the windows open, and the predictable happened. Upper thirties and chill when I threw off the covers to my personal paradise and padded out into the darkness.

(Plank drilled out and two deck screws driven in to bring the curling tongue of contempt from the lumber to heel).

There is one project to accomplish before I feel good about heading north for the All-Mac weekend preceding his interment at Arlington on Monday: I need to drill out a plank on the front deck that is curling insouciantly at one end. Two good screws to replace the nails that could no longer oppose the inexorable upward separation. Should be fairly straightforward.

I have said that before. Actually, it is the only talking point down here that means a damn thing and it is not going on the list. I am just going to do it.

(OK, so it is not perfect. But there is a joint I repaired last year whose screws have backed out, need to be re-secured and Dremeled to cut off the protruding screw-head nice and flush before I fall on my ass again and tear up the semi-repaired leg. Meanwhile, the garden seems to getting along perfectly well without me. I wonder what the hell is growing out there?)

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com