Whole lotta nothing

As I type, a flurry of lightning bugs flutters around outside like tiny yellow strobe lights. The beauty is, with all of our tall grasses all around the Ranch - a firefly's natural habitat - we have a billion of them. And, with a whole lotta nothing around us, there's no light pollution to dampen their glow.

Fireflies in one of our pastures at midnight

When we first moved to the Ranch last summer, I asked my sister, who was from this area, what was down our road in the opposite direction. Her reply still resonates with me.

"Just a whole lotta nothin'," she said flatly.

I smiled, knowing I was home.

It's true: there really isn't much where we live. I drive over 20 miles round trip just for groceries. The horizon around our neck of the woods isn't polluted with neon McDonald's signs; in fact, the nearest McDonald's is at the same place as the grocery store, over 20 miles from home.

A pasture of sheep about three miles from the Ranch

Indeed, I think this corner of NE Ohio is the only place that doesn't have a reliable cell phone signal. My phone notoriously drops calls.

But, for a whole lotta nothing, there sure is a lot of something going on out here: life.

A bird's nest I found at the Ranch: made of (what else): husky hair and pieces of blue tarp I use for roofs over the kennels!

I recently spent over 12 hours in the city for several back-to-back photo assignments. As soon as I returned home, I breathed a sigh of relief. The city is nice, but I wouldn't want to live there.

I have so many things here that I love. Like, my sweet hens, "The Ladies."

The Ladies leaving the barn for a morning spent free ranging

Acres and acres of space.

A field of winter wheat just about ripe for the harvest across the street from the Ranch

Gorgeous lilies that grow wild and cover the grounds at the Ranch.

More space.

The 150 acre corn field directly across from the Ranch

More flowers...

Yes, it might be a whole lotta nothin' out here. But I will take that "nothing" over the city any day. I can't think of any place I'd rather be!

Sometimes, the world just needs to stop

"The ER"

After six hours in the hallway of a packed emergency room, I simply started bawling when the ER doc said the words.

"The C T scan showed several abscesses at the surgical site," he said, his big brown eyes looking intently into mine.

I spiked another 100 degree temperature last night. Despite being on a fairly high dose of antibiotics for five days, my infection continues. A CAT scan revealed several pockets of infection, or abscesses, within my womb/surgical site. There is talk of doing an additional surgery if my body doesn't respond to yet another very potent antibiotic in the next couple days.

I don't know how to react to this at all. I've never had surgery, much less the post-op complications I've encountered in the last 12 days. I have realized I have been trying to get back on the runners way too soon, doing too much, and am afraid I am going to cause permanent damage to my body if I don't start taking this seriously. Then I will never be back on the runners, literally.

During the last week of my recovery, Yeti developed a huge lump under his left cheek. I hadn't seen him in a few days while I was recovering from surgery, and when I finally went out in the kennel, I was shocked to find Yeti in this condition. I thought the worst: a tumor. But he is only a year and a half old. Turned out he had a large abscess that had developed from a scrap with Jack over a girl - Big Brown - who had been in heat.

So, one week after surgery, and nursing a fever myself, I had to take Yeti in for surgery to open and clean this large abscess.


Yeti after surgery. That thing that looks like a piece of penne pasta is a drain tube from the incision

Sometimes, the world just needs to stop.

Hopefully now we - Yeti and me - are both on the mend.

Here are some more pleasing pictures taken recently when I actually did get out of the house, one day, with the girls:


Wild-growing sweet pea along a dirt road in rural NE Ohio. Sweet pea is one of my favorite flowers.


The colorful, lavender spores from a thistle growing along the same rural road


Another pretty


What I call a Maxfield Parrish sky. Maxfield Parrish is a New Hampshire-born painter who used dazzlingly luminous colors in his paintings which almost always focused on a subject in front of an amazing sky. He is one of my favorite painters. For more information about Maxfield Parrish, click here.


Getting ice cream with sprinkles in your night gown. What could be better?


The sprinkles

Here's to ice cream with sprinkles, pretty flowers and better times.