Notes from Maine - 2025/03/30

Everyone is in the barn this morning. All the horses, I mean. Earl (shire) is alone, eating his twiggy hay. Maybelle (spotted draft) and Lilly (beautiful filly) are next door, eating soft hay that I saved upstairs for them. For the first few days of her life, Lilly would paw and push the hay around, imitating her mother. She occasionally chewed on a piece but I don’t think she had any real notion of eating the hay. Now, she’s almost eleven days old (where does the time go?) and the hay really interests her. When she ran over this morning, Maybelle flipped a flake of hay over to Lilly so she had her own stash to paw at. 

If I reach into the stall unexpectedly, Lilly will turn and bounce away, sometimes with a jubilant kick in my direction. But if I reach in and hold my hand in one place, she approaches to have her neck scratched. She loves that. Her hair is incredibly soft. I had forgotten how magical it is to have a tiny little horse in the barn.

They’re all inside because of the rain. The forecast says snow this morning, but the clouds didn’t get the message. Earl could be outside—he can take a little cold rain—but I figured I would just wait until the rain stops or turns to snow. Maybelle and Lilly have to wait until this afternoon for their turnout. The vet keeps saying that Lilly shouldn’t get wet. 

“Don’t they get wet out in nature?” I asked.

“Her father is 2,000 pounds. Do you think that’s natural?” she asked.

It’s a good point. The horses in my barn have been selectively bred to be supernatural. Best not to take a chance with little Lilly’s health.

A week ago, all our snow was gone and the mud was just starting to show signs of drying up. Now we have snow on the ground and rain coming down. I’m sure it will be gone soon, but it feels like winter is trying to get one last jab in as it’s chased away by the warm temperatures. Albert (dog) likes the snow. It’s way more interesting to chase a frisbee in snow instead of skidding and slapping through knee-deep mud. 

I’ve been waiting for a good day to go get some more plywood. I need dry weather and clean roads in order to transport it home safely. I might have to wait another week. The kitchen still needs a couple more cabinet doors and I’m out of plywood. 

At least the kitchen is functional, despite the lack of doors. I haven’t decided where everything goes yet, but I’m getting there. Last week my friends came over for our annual grilled cheese party. Once a year, they show up with different breads and cheeses and we make dinner on the stove. Last year’s event was cancelled. All I had was a hotplate in the laundry room last year. But this year the kitchen was totally functional, including a vent fan for the first time in this house’s history. Nobody burned their sandwich, but if they had it would have been fine. The foul air would have been swept outside for the neighbors to enjoy. 

I had a dream about my grandmother’s kitchen last night. When I was growing up, she had dark cabinets with black pulls. The oven was in a column to the right of the stove, and the stove had pushbuttons to select different heat levels. After living there about thirty years, they remodeled the kitchen and replaced the dark cabinets with light maple. I kinda did the same thing here, but I only waited twenty years. It seemed like she lived in that house forever, but it was only about forty years. I guess that doesn’t feel like all that much time to me anymore. 

In my dream, the cabinets were dark again. I spun around, looking at them, wondering why anyone would go to the trouble of putting those dark cabinets back in. Everything was so much brighter and cheerier once they made the change. 

It’s not difficult to imagine why I had that dream. I have my grandmother’s mirror in the bedroom where I’m sleeping, and there’s still a picture of my sister taped to the corner. My sister is standing in that kitchen, shortly after it was remodeled. I must have been looking at it last night. I wonder what the kitchen looks like now. 

Someone must have been born in this house at some point, right? The house is more than 200 years old. Lilly, in her whole precious life, has only ever known the barn and the side yard. She has met a bunch of people and glimpsed a black dog with pointed ears (Albert). She has seen her giant, scary father poke his head into her area. Lilly hides behind her mother when he does that. I’m excited to watch her experience spring for the first time, after all this snow goes away again.