After most of a lifetime in Montana, May is spring for me, even though in Kentucky it arrives much earlier. For a Montana native, March, even with green grass or April, with daytime temperatures that can get into the 80s isn't spring. Spring comes in May.

There are other things that seem "wrong" about spring in Kentucky. The first springtime flowers you notice here along the rural roadsides are daffodils. Daffodils are supposed to be flower garden flowers, though here they are garden flowers simply gone wild.

Then there are the flowering trees, beginning with the redbuds. They can be incredibly georgous, a bank of soft raspberry parfait color banked against dark treetrunks with trees and underbrush just starting to leaf out.


The first of the true wildflowers are the woods violets. They hug the ground along fencerows and creeks and in the forested hills, deep purple against the glossy green leaves, sometimes difficult to see against the dark ground of fall leaves. They are lovely and delicate, a flower that could not survive the harsh winters of Montana.

But I miss the early harbingers of spring in Montana. First, the brilliant yellow of the first buttercups, sometimes even edging a late snowbank. As a child, the buttercups arrived on the hill behind the cabin, announcing that winter would not, in fact, last forever and the overshoes, heavy coats, gloves and scarves could soon be put away.

The buttercups were followed soon by the "shooting stars" that needed warmer weather and drier ground, brilliant sparks against still nearly barren ground.

There were no wild flowering trees. Occasionally you would see apple or crabapple trees in someone’s back yard but in the hills, while plum thickets and chokecherry bushes could get as high as 12 to 15 feet, they were not trees. They flowered only briefly, white drifts of blossoms looking like late snow along the branches.

A hard frost or late spring snowstorm could wipe out a season’s berry crop as well as any garden planted by enthusiastic but overly optimistic gardeners. Early June was considered "usually safe" by most long time residents. A 3-day blizzard with 6-foot snowdrifts in late May were not uncommon and in my 30-plus years of living there, I have been snowed on in every month except August.

Spring in Kentucky is earlier and a much gentler season, with lush greenery following closely after the enthusiastic flushes of flowers and blossoming trees, covering rounded hills and obscuring the landscape. Rain and fog softens the colors and the landscape even into the heat of summer, the brilliant greens you see only in early spring in the west continuing into the fall in Kentucky.

Kentucky Derby 2009 ... Dad would have loved it.

Dad was a rancher and a cowboy most of his life. He viewed horses as a useful and necessary tool, a necessity on a western ranch.

The posted photo was taken when he was in his 60s, while he and Mom were still running the ranch themselves, without regular outside help.

He was a small man, wiry and athletic and in a different time might well have become a jockey himself. He rode horses for his uncle in "brush track" races in South Dakota until he was in his teens and never lost his interest in race horses.

For a rancher, one full day away from home in the summer was a "vacation" and some of my earliest memories of "vacations" are of a day at the county fair ... and the horse races.

The relay races and the wild horse races at the Sheridan County Wyoming rodeo were always fun, but my father's favorites were the "real" Thoroughbred races at the Billings Fair in August. At a time when driving 130 miles to spend a day just for fun was an effort, we always spent one day there and the horse races were the big attraction for my father.

I loved them as well, growing up on horseback. Race horse books, starting with C. W. Anderson's books, graduating to the "Black Stallion" books by Walter Farley contributed to my early ambitions were to be a jockey, not a career for females at the time, though horses have always been a big part of my life.

For Dad, one of the big attractions of retirement and winters in Phoenix, AZ was the winter racing. He went often, studied the race forms and enjoyed his $2.00 bets. He studied the riding of particular jockeys and had his favorites with both horses and jockeys. He always said he would really like to go see the Kentucky Derby "someday".

He would have had a bet on the little Thoroughbred that came from "out west" ... with a cowboy trainer and owners ... to win. I can imagine his response to the question of "What makes you think this horse belongs in the Derby?" ... and he would have agreed with Bob Baffert's comment "I think the cowboys brought a pretty good horse to the Derby."

He always talked about wanting to see the "real thing" just once ... the "big race". My relocation from Montana to Kentucky came years after my father's death and one of my ongoing regrets is that he was not alive to come here and see the Kentucky Derby.

I'd have loved to be with him and see his enjoyment of finally getting to see "the big race". It is, in fact, one of the reasons I've never gone to the Derby myself since I've lived here. I still miss my father acutely, even now, when he's been gone now nearly 20 years.

One of the first thoughts I had, when I saw this year's Derby, with the little horse from New Mexico winning, was "I wish Dad was here and could see this." He would have truly enjoyed watching that race and seeing the little horse from "out West" win the "Big One" ...

Grandpa was a cowboy

I've always enjoyed reading westerns all my life but anytime I think "cowboy" it is always my grandfather that I see in my mind's eye. He was tall and rawboned, with white hair and a moustache even in my earliest memories and sat a horse as if he'd been born there. He was a self-contained man, quiet voiced and not given to conversation. Looking back, it seems he was not just comfortable being alone but that he may have preferred it.

With no siblings or neighbor children for playmates, my companions were mostly four-footed, so I growing up in a somewhat reserved adult household I was not inclined to chatter. I did, of course, go through the usual "many questions" stage and I still remember his response when "why" and "what for" got wearing and repetitive. He did, still, have a bit of the "south" with certain words, and "for" was "fur".

"What for, Grandpa?"

"What fur?"

"Yes. What for?"

He'd snort, which he did very well, through a rather Roman nose. "Cat fur, to make kitten britches."

Grandpa was born toward the end of the "trail herd" times and left home permanently at the age of 11, starting his working life riding with the trail herds driven from Missouri up into Kansas and Nebraska in the late 1800s.

He taught me much of what I know of horses and cattle and although ranch life was hard on both men and animals, something of compassion as well. He rarely said anything derogatory about neighbors the rare times I remember him doing so involved them not caring for their animals well. His livestock never went without adequate pasture, or hay or water even during the worst of the Montana snowstorms with temperatures well below zero.

I never remember hearing him raise his voice to man or beast and although it was uncommon for a ranch to have a "house pet" he had a big, black tomcat that spent much of his time in the house when I was a child. The preferred place for both Grandpa and Old Tom on cold winter afternoons was on the couch directly across from the potbellied stove. When Grandpa would come in from feeding cattle, he would pour a cup of coffee from the battered blue granitewear pot that sat at the back of the kitchen range and head for the potbellied stove.

Old Tom was always curled up in there and would grumble as he was pushed over. Once Grandpa got settled, with his long legs propped up on the rim of the stove, he would open the book he was currently reading and settle in. I would be reading too, at the other end of the couch, but I was always watching for the next scene I knew was coming.

Old Tom knew something of patience and would appear to be comfortably asleep until Grandpa was definitely engrossed in the book. Then, one paw would very carefully be stretched out and then "whack!" on the back of Grandpa's levi-covered leg and a black streak would be off the couch and halfway to the kitchen before the book, escaping the swat aimed at him.

Although he was only able to complete the third grade before he went to work at a man's job, he enjoyed reading. He had a floor to ceiling bookcase filled with books, was the one of our family that read for enjoyment. Although my grandmother had graduated from high school, something almost unheard of in that time, and my mother was herself a schoolteacher, he was the person that received books as gifts at Christmas. The first book I can actually remember truly "reading" was one from his bookshelf, Trails Plowed Under, by Charles Russell. Although one of the attractions for me were the wonderful paintings and drawings in the book, I remember several of the stories still.

He was not a demonstrative man. I don't remember him ever hugging or kissing me but I never doubted that he loved me. I remember him lifting me up on his cowhorse and letting me ride while he led him through the corral to the pasture. I remember him spending hours showing me how to milk a cow and how to squirt milk in the barn cat's mouth. I remember him showing me how to warm a bit with a bare hand and my breath so it wouldn't stick to a horse's tongue when they were bridled in the winter.

I got to "drive" the work team on the feedground while the cattle were fed. I got to hold the reins and I listened for his every word, which of course the horses were responding to rather than to my efforts at "driving". But I can still remember how important I felt I was to be helping while Dad and Grandpa pitched hay off the bobsled and the team plodded around the field with traces jingling and harness leather creaking in the cold.

He certainly did not have an easy life. He was holding an adult's job when he was eleven. When he and my grandmother filed for a homestead, he worked for a "neighboring" ranch, 40 miles away, for cash. He was paid $40 a month, with one weekend off a month. We moved to our own small farm and he and my grandmother ran the ranch alone for several years after that, finally retiring at the age of 77.

Even after he retired and moved to town and my parents took over the ranch, my grandparents had most of a big backyard in garden and raised and canned enough for both families. We ran some cattle for him on shares and he would be at the ranch in the fall when we weaned calves, borrowing my horse to ride into the corral and separate which heifers he wanted to keep as replacements.

I was close to my parents and both grandparents, but although I lost my grandfather only 3 years after I was grown and gone from home, many of my most vivid childhood memories are of him. So many things I've used ... and needed ... throughout my life are things I learned from him. Many of his "lessons" I have used all my life with horses, but not only horsemanship, but a love for books and perhaps something self-sufficiency and how to be stubborn and endure hardships and setbacks without complaint.

2009 ... New Year's resolutions ... and looking back

Holidays are always the most difficult time of the year for me. No family close and even though I've lived in Kentucky for nearly 10 years now, it will never truly feel like "home" to me. I can hardly bear to listen to the song "Home for the Holidays" during the Christmas season, it is something that won't happen for me.

The holidays I remember the best were the ones that included my parents, grandparents and close family friends. Those memories, of course, lead to others and I find myself thinking "I wish I'd had a chance to tell them ...."

That phrase is often finished by " .... thank you for doing this for me." Almost never for something purchased and given as a gift but a gifts of time and attention.

I tended to be more of a "Daddy's girl" perhaps in part because as an only child, I was the "extra help" and the help was most often needed outside. So many of my interests were more in line with my father's ... geology, mining, arrowheads, rockhounding ... and I was horseback doing ranch work from the time I was able to get on and steer a horse in the right direction.

There were many times after I was an adult with children that my mother watched the children while Dad and I "worked". But the time I remember most ... appreciated most ... and most often wonder if I thanked her for ... was her keeping both kids while my Dad and I went on a 4-day trip back to the area in Montana where they met and were married.

She would have loved to go as well, seeing places she had wonderful memories of, places they had been together, still a few people they had known then. But she stayed home and kept the two grandchildren so I could go. I have wonderful memories of that trip, even some tangible evidence of it, one of the few keepsakes that I still have. We placer mined in a creek where Dad had mined as a young man and I have a small gold nugget we found together.

Did I ever remember to thank her for making this memory possible? or did I just bubble over telling her how much fun I had and everything I got to see?

Looking back, the things I regret are the things I did not do ... acts of kindness that I failed to see and do at the time ... actual words of thanks I neglected to say ...

So my New Year's resolution for 2009 is not about getting more organized, or getting more work accomplished, or projects I want to complete.

It is to remember to thank those who do things I appreciate ... to make the effort to say "Thank you ... I appreciate your help, your thoughtfulness, your time".

Things I miss at Christmas

I think everyone has things they miss from their "Christmas past". As we get older, there are family members no longer with us and friends in far places, things change and it seems there are always a few empty places in our hearts.

Sometimes, however, it can be the little things that would not seem to be a big loss, but things that loom large as Christmas approaches. I know some of the things I never truly think of during the rest of the year seem to suddenly gain importance at Christmas.

We don't do much Christmas now but for years, when we were still putting up a Christmas tree, I missed going out on the ranch and finding our tree, cutting it down and bringing it home. We looked for cedar trees, because the pines in that area were not very full and cedar usually were smaller and bushier. They always made the house smell so good, with such a distinctive smell, but you can't find cedar trees now at the commercial Christmas tree sellers.

I miss my Grandfather particularly at Christmas. I always enjoyed watching him look through his presents to find the one from my father. Grandpa chewed plug tobacco and it had gotten to be a tradition that Dad's gift to him every year was a carton of Horseshoe plug tobacco. It was what Grandpa always looked for and unwrapped first, took a chew and would always say the same thing "There, now I can relax, I've got my 'tobaccy'."

Another thing I truly miss at Christmas is my Grandmother's mince pie. She made and canned her own mincemeat and made the most wonderful piecrust I've ever eaten. Neither my mother nor I could ever make good piecrust. Although Grandma tried to teach us both many times Mama and I just simply could not seem to get the hang of it. I can remember the big dishpan of flour Grandma used, watching her cut up lard into it, taking it out and rolling it, but no matter how often she guided me through the process I never could get it to turn out like hers.

I finally gave up and started buying frozen ready-made pie crust at the store. While it wasn't all that traditional, it was at least edible. But I remember trying to make mince pie for the first few Christmas dinners after I was married and not home for Christmas. I bought mincemeat in the jars, followed the directions, but was very disappointed. It tasted nothing like Grandma's mincemeat pie.

I finally found a receipe for sour cream and raisin pie that I ended up making a tradition, which isn't bad. But at Christmas I still find myself wishing I could ... just once more ... put a bite of Grandma's mincemeat pie, still warm from the oven, in my mouth ... and ask her again how she made it.

Luxury is ...

Everyone has different ideas about what they consider luxury, what makes them say "it just doesn't get better than this" and for some people it isn't what they can buy.

For me, having been raised in Montana, on a ranch, dealing with lots of hours outside working in below-zero temperatures for months on end, without any "modern conveniences" ... it is being WARM. I actually deal better with cold weather than with hot weather, but it is still a struggle to do outside chores, feeding cattle and horses, pitching hay that the wind blows back in your face, chopping ice in creeks or tanks so they can drink, fighting cold harness buckles or pickup chains.

Clothing has gotten much better over the 40 years I've been doing this. But even if you are not freezing when you come in, for me, I consider it luxury to come in, get out of cold, frozen outer garments and sit in front of a stove where there is actually a real, live fire. A stove that radiates heat and you can actually see flames. I know it is just my imagination, but it "feels" warmer than if you push a button and stand over a heat vent.

This goes back to my childhood. I vividly remember my grandfather coming in from morning feeding, his gray mustash beaded with tiny beads of ice. He would hold his hands over the kitchen cookstove to warm them and pour a cup of coffee from the blue granitewear pot that sat on the back of the Home Comfort range.

Most afternoons, he would stoke up the big black potbellied stove that sat in the living room. Grandpa's "corner" was the corner of the room closest to that stove, with an alcove on one wall that held his built-in bookcase and a couch against the other wall. The couch was close enough that he could sit on the couch and prop his feet on the rim of the stove and his afternoons were often spent like this, reading if he didn't have any minor repairs harness repairs or other inside sit-down jobs.

I often joined him in the afternoons with a book of my own, and ginger cookies if I could coax them from my grandmother, curled up on the other end of the couch. He also had a big black tomcat who shared our space, though I'm sure the cat believed it was his couch and he was sharing, very reluctantly, with us.

Tom did, of course, prefer the place directly across from the stove, where the heat radiated the strongest. When Grandpa would go in to sit down, he would invariably have to move the cat over before he sat. I used to wait, knowing what was coming. Tom would wait until everyone was settled and quiet, apparantly perfectly content and dozing. After Grandpa got his feet up on the stove rim, had the book open and was engrossed in the book, Tom would open one eye, stretch a bit and straighten out one front leg ... just working a kink out here, people ... then in a flash he would reach over, put the paw against the back of Grandpa's thigh, flex and dig claws in and would be off the couch and gone!

Grandpa's swat would never connect with anything except air ... as soon as he would hit the floor the cat would swagger away with plenty of cat attitude ... and I would be giggling.

Even now, one of the things I consider a luxury is being able to sit in my recliner (definitely a modern convenience I appreciate) in front of the wood burning stove in our living room, with my little terrier beside me, a fuzzy blanket over my legs and a good book, watching the flames flicker behind the glass. I'm always glad when cold weather arrives here in Kentucky, cold enough to start a fire up in the wood stove and keep it going.

So for me, luxury isn't a big screen TV ... or a winter vacation in Florida or Arizona. Luxury and contentment is a wood stove, a recliner, a lap dog ... and a good book.

"I want" ... the comercializing of Christmas

A series of posts on one of the lists regarding Christmas wish lists for underpriviledged children sponsored by various charities caught my interest. The original tone questioned these children asking for expensive items when they "needed" things like coats and warm boot with a tendency to be put off by these requests. I have to admit to thinking a bit along those lines myself but more thoughtful posts made better points and started me really thinking about the situation and remembering my only truly serious "I want" from my childhood.

The one "store bought" thing I can remember wanting very desperately when I was a child (maybe 7 or 8) was a child-sized saddle in the saddle shop. I rode bareback because the saddles we had were adult sized and my parents wouldn't let me ride with one since they were afraid I'd slip and get my foot through a stirrup. This saddle was light enough for me to pick up and carry, I could reach the stirrups and it smelled so good ... that new leather smell. I can still remember how very desperately I wanted that saddle and struggling to blink back tears as we left the shop.

But when we got home, my mother sat me down and went over the $$. Even at that age, I was raising "livestock" for my spending money, chickens at that time. I sold them in the fall, gave half the money to my folks for the feed and then put as much aside as I could to buy more chicks the next spring. I knew how much it cost to buy a chick, how much I would probably get when I sold them, that some would die so I wouldn't have all of them to sel. I knew I'd have half that money to buy more chicks the next year and if I chose to spend it on something else, how much I could spend and still have money for more chicks. At that age, I was already not expecting my parents to buy things to give to me ... not "big" things. Special little treats, an ice cream cone when we went to town, a particular kind of cereal, material for a new shirt ... but not "big" things.

I could see in black and white the numbers showing that it would take me 3 years to save enough money to buy the saddle even if I didn't increase the number of chicks I was buying each spring. By that time I was already planning sell enough chicks in the next year or two to buy my first pig ... for more potential income. I realized that I couldn't do both and agreed that more chicks ... and then the pig ... was a better decision.

I was able to make that decision though because I knew how much money I could selling those chicks, how much it cost to raise them to butcher weight and what my profit would be. It was obvious I couldn't do what I wanted to do with the chickens ... and the pig ... if I took most of that money to buy the saddle. My parents didn't say I couldn't save to buy the saddle, if that's what I wanted, they just showed me the numbers and that it wasn't possible to do both.

I'm not sure that it is as easy for parents to explain the economic facts when they are working a job that pays "X" $$ ... and having to explain that the house payment, car payment, utilities and food and everything else has to come out of that ... and there isn't enough left over for whatever it is. It was difficult enough for me to realize how much money something cost when I had something as concrete to refer to as "X" number of chickens brings me "X" dollars ... and to make more I need "X" dollars to buy "X" more chickens. If I can't buy more chickens, I don't get more money. I could understand that.

Children rarely connect $$ with "want". They see things advertised on TV, hear other kids rave about things they have and of course they want "one of those" too. It takes time ... and careful teaching by the parents to start them along the path of "if I want this, it costs this much and means I can't have that" as a part of maturing.

Without the advertising and hype generated by the companies producing these products, my parents weren't dealing with the problem of advertising targeting children and designed to convince them their product was a "must have". So for them, it was just taking the time and patience to present the actual facts to me in a simple enough way that I could understand and then give me the freedom to make a choice.

I have ended up coming to the conclusion that the "I want" syndrome is really not the fault of the child or even of the parents who are dealing with explaining economic realities that are more complex with fewer concrete examples. And you can't even really blame the companies who build the toys and then advertise them ... they wouldn't be in business, employing people, if they didn't.

But I do feel fortunate that I did not have to contend with those pressures as a child ... and am very glad I am not raising children in today's society.