Environment

When we moved into this house, there was an active cow pasture abutting our property.

The cows weren't all that active -- though the first time I realized that you could get something that big to move just by walking quickly up to it, I was pretty impressed -- but the pasture, yes -- about thirty cows and calves. Over time, the number of cows dwindled, and after about ten years, the pasture was converted to crops -- usually corn. One of the side effects of that changeover was that without the mobile fertilizers, the farmer had to periodically put down something. That was new to me - not too much of that where I'd lived before. Even in South Dakota, not too much. When I first came to this area, I was taking a test drive in a car I was thinking of buying. We stopped out in the country so that we could switch drivers. Ah, smell that country air! the salesman exclaimed, and I thought What, are you crazy? What a stench! I've gotten used to it, though it doesn't hurt that you don't smell it all that often. This morning, you do. Hoo, boy.

The aroma mixes nicely, though, with the hot smell of the tar that the paving crew is putting on a driveway about a half block from here, and the sounds of their equipment -- big honkin' dump trucks, Bobcats, some kind of gihugic paving machine with a shrill backup tone -- mixes nicely with the sound of the massive cement truck in our driveway, or the sweating, hustling guys slopping it into wheelbarrows and into the forms for our new steps.

Just another day in the country....