Happy New Year

Happy New Year and if you don't know it is the Year of the Goat. People call me Millie, or Baby Belle, Jr, but my name is Million Belles. I am named after Million Bells the Flower, the beautiful cascading easy-to-grow flower that looks good anywhere and brightens any garden.

Just like me. I have been brightening gardens for years, I especially like brightening the vegetable garden every chance I get. The last time I was in there I brightened all the chard out of the garden and most of the kale too, so I am also responsible for the new garden gate which unfortunately has a much stronger latch on it.

I have also proved easy to grow and that is why I am on a torture diet involving a few meager strands of local grass hay and a smattering of grain. When I say smattering I mean you can count the little pellets as they ting sadly into the feed pan. Ting ting ting - that's about it. Every day is another three-ting-day.

A lot has changed here, so many things, way too many to even calculate, some of them I have already forgotten and they will pass into eternity undocumented. Wronny is no longer the herd queen but that is a long story, longer than The Upanishads and deeper than the sea.

The farmer swore all up and down that we would not be getting another farm dog because that is just too much grief and heartache and besides in any case we could search far and wide and we would never find another dog like Spenny because there isn't one and it wouldn't be fair to the new dog would it, always living in the shadow of the Mt. Everest of dogs, the spendiferous Spenny the Angel Dog....etc etc...I'm sorry there was more but I dozed off, it was all cut from the same velvet cloth.

Then a couple of months later the farmer started saying, we certainly aren't going to go out and LOOK for another dog, that is ridiculous. But maybe some day the phone will ring and someone will say, hello, I have the most perfect farm dog in the world but unfortunately I just got a job singing Abba songs on a cruise ship and I cannot take my dog with me, and I wondered if by chance you might have room for a perfect farm dog? So we aren't going to LOOK for a dog but maybe some day the phone will ring and a dog will FIND us.

We all stared blankly, all thinking the same thing: I hope not.

The summer wore on into the fall. My daughter freshened with the most beautiful udder the herd has ever seen. The Terror turned one year old with no improvement in her behavior. Ellie May continued the family's smarmy tradition of following the farmer everywhere, simpering and begging for pets and scratches. The hay was cut and baled.

And then one day the phone rang and it was the very nice lady from the beautiful farm up the road where they have the lush pastures and the Angus cattle and the lady said, "hello, this may sound a little bit strange," - wait for it - "but I have the most perfect farm dog,"

.....(to be continued)