Missing Mama

This week is the three year anniversary of my mothers passing. You would think time would have ease the sorrow, but on some days it is if she has just left. Today while flipping through a website I ran across something silly and reached to hit the speed dial on my phone to call her. Oh man that hurt to have to stop and close my phone.

This blog is supposed to be about chickens and bees well mom gave me my great love of animals that started me on my life. She was a single parent and more times than can count we had our utilities turned off because we couldn't afford them, but we never were without animals. Dogs, cats, fish, for a glorious two years a horse. While her health was good we camped and hiked. Cheap vacations that took us out into a nature few of the kids around us ever experienced. The neighbors in any house we lived called our yard unkept, we called it naturalized! After one tiff with a neighbor we tore almost all the lawn out of the front yard and replaced it with vegetable and wildflower gardens.

There's nothing I would love more than to take a dozen eggs from my hens to mom. She'd just scramble them and burn them as usual but I know she'd say they were the best she ever tasted. Mom had a talent for destroying eggs in almost any form. I loathed breakfast food as a child. I wouldn't even eat eggs at a restaurant I thought they all tasted as nasty as moms. Mom would have adored reading my copies of Backyard Chickens. I got my love for learning about everything from her. Her jobs at doctors offices always kept us well supplied with a variety of magazines.

When my husband and I got our acreage and built a nice home mom was so happy for us. She and I spent long hours talking about what we wanted to accomplish out here. If someone offered my a winning lottery ticket or the chance to spend 20 minutes sitting on my patio with mom I'd never hesitate to choose mom. A warm summer evening with the the clover and buckwheat in bloom. Hens clucking contentedly and bees buzzing through the flowerbeds. To sit and talk about so much would be such an incredible gift.