Life in Numbers: Day XXX
Straw, Smoke, and Stillness
Heading back home this morning after walking Auri to school (or jogging, really, as Auri has recently started zooming to school on her scooter), there was a trailer in the barley field filled with nine barley straw bales. There were another twenty bales that I counted still in the field, though I am sure there were more just out of sight as the field ran down the hill.
Walking to the woods at lunchtime later, the smell of woodsmoke hung in the air. There was a thrilling stillness in the woods, that autumnal quiet you get just as the season starts to bed in, that hints of comfort food, glasses of red wine, and winter tales by a roaring fire. Everything seemed filled with promise.
Walking home, there were some perfectly formed fallen leaves, and I remembered being small and gathering leaves with my mother to take them home to paint and make leaf print pictures. That was in North Lincolnshire, which means I couldn’t have been more than three and a half - one of my earliest memories.
Sixteen years ago today, in 2008, Euan brought home Osa for the first time. Osa was an Anatolian and Australian Shepherd cross and a proper character; and a big part of our lives until he departed this world in June 2018. In fact, he still is a big part of our lives, and Auri knows that as well as watching over her and her little sister, Osa is there, in The Indescribable, looking after other dogs and people who arrive.
