I heard a dog bark today. It was the kind of bark Riley would give when he had just gotten home from his meanderings around the countryside (literally) and he wanted to be let inside the house and given a decent feed. Not that he always ate what was on his plate. I often wondered why he wasn't hungry when he'd been gone for at least a day but I knew he visited the neighbour's dogs regularly and probably helped himself to their food. I read too, on Facebook, that he also had the ability to leave them gifts of beef tongue and other assorted goodies. I am thankful that he repaid their generosity because there were enough hearts, livers and tongues in our deep freezer to deal with. Those organs had been there for years and I was not prepared to touch them. When the freezer broke down a couple of weeks after Dave passed away, we took those things out, smelling foully as they did, and disposed of them outside of the pasture to help feed the coyotes.
Dave always told me that I was to take Riley with me whenever I went outside at night, in case there were coyotes about. I never pronounced coyotes right while I was in the States. Dave said it one way, others said it another, and I said it the Aussie way. (At least I pronounce it correctly in the written form.) The coyotes would have parties in the middle of the night and sometimes early in the morning when Dave was leaving for work, he would get a firecracker, or bottle rocket, and set it off. That would quieten them down. Apparently another 'trick' the coyotes had would be to send a 'lone'coyote to play with a tied up dog and then while the dog and coyote were playing, the other coyotes would come and attack the dog. Riley spent the night indoors when he was home. Some mornings he would come home all wet after swimming through the town 'pond' and he would have a quiet day relaxing at my feet.
I can hear a lawn mower and a neighbour must be making the most of a dry day since it's been raining off and on for a few days already. Lawnmowers! The memories of pushing one around in the front yard, the back yard, the yard near the chicken coop and behind the 'shop. It took a lot of time and once the good weather had come and the grass was growing prolifically, I was mowing almost every day to get it done. I was also, planting more grass seed in the area that Nathan and Dave had cleared and leveled with the tractor which would need mowing once it was grown. It was hard work. One time I had had enough and said to Dave that I couldn't do it - it was too hard! He told me again about the lever to press down so it would be self-propelled and I just looked at him, close to tears and frustrated by all the mowing. He took the lawn mower from me, demonstrated it, mowed it and gave it back to me when he was almost done. Why didn't he show me what he meant weeks before as it would have made my job so much easier??!! Well, at least it made it so much easier from then on. I could even do it one-handed.
Nathan was concerned about all the mowing I had to do and when he came to visit for a couple of months, that became his job. He said to me, "Mum, when I've gone back to Australia, this will be your job, won't it?" Since Dave worked long hours, it was definitely a lot more practical for me to do but I reassured Nathan that once the snow falls, I won't have to mow for another 3 or 4 months. He was trying to figure out a way to get me a ride-on mower. Dave had said that we would get one and we were looking at mowers. He, of course, would always consider the ones that could be a snowblower or have bits added to them, with a lot of power etc. I was content to let him make the decision since he had way more experience with motors and engines, machinery and tools, than I ever had.
I miss Dave.
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