Right down the road from the inn is Darnell Farms. You can’t miss the signs: Free Picnic Area…Bikers Welcome…Farm Tours…Hoop Cheese, Greasy Beans, Cold Drinks….  I have a picnic table by the river I like to sit and write at.  The river has a subtle roar to it, almost like a whisper. The river is always a murky olive right by the shoreline where it slows down and ripples and whirls. Elephant skin, that’s what it looks like. But it quickly erases itself to start again. And tiny leaves float like boats adrift and they are safe until they encounter the treacherous rocks. The trees grow out over the water at a 45 degree angle, defying gravity, and making themselves available for rope swings. And the bridge in the picture? I get to cross that at least twice a day….and I have to catch my breath each and every time…especially when the “smoky” mist is still there in the mornings:

It’s a working farm and I love seeing the big John Deer tractors emerge from the field. It doesn’t matter who is driving…they always wave. Right now they are growing tomatoes and peppers:

They are also growing flowers: mums and sunflowers. But the sunflowers hang their heads in kind of a sad way, at least they look sad to me.  Deflated.  And just a month ago they were harvesting squash. Before that strawberries.  And they are growing corn but that field makes me anxious and I don’t spend a lot of time looking at it. The stalks stand there so straight and narrow, high and mighty, the opposite of the sunflower. Their husky leaves grow straight up to the sky like taunting fingers.  Horror movie anyone?  But this wood shed reminds me of The Boxcar Children so it technically cancels out the Children of the Corn:

As I sat there today and wrote this sweat bee kept checking me out…hovering with his tiny beady eyes and invisible wings. He was only as big as a grain of rice. He landed on my arm a few times but I wasn’t sweating so he didn’t stay there long.  Then he landed on my computer and just sat there like he was posing for a picture. A few weeks ago a sweat bee stung me, her stinger getting stuck in my forearm, and the stinger was still attached to her backside. I knew she was a “she” because only the female sweat bees sting. I watched her struggle trying to break free from my forearm and imagined her saying “take that you big meanie.” And I literally felt like a big meanie. So I made friends with this one:

And sometimes I lay on that picnic bench by the river and stare into the blue sky….

….and just let my mind wander:

The sky goes on forever. And ever. And I live on a big, round ball right smack in the middle…because in forever: everything is in the middle. There is no end or edge of anything. And I don’t even know what direction of the sky this is. Is it forever forward or is it forever backward? Is it forever right or is it forever left? And the river reflects the sky, until the water hits the rocks and turns on itself, and breaks the picture into a billion pieces. Forever reflected into forever.  That must involve infinity and fractals and Pi.  And there are like a billion acres making up this ball I live on, and somehow I ended up on this particular one.  That must count for something…

And then I realize I’ve been daydreaming for hours and I’ve been gone all day. And I haven’t really gotten anything done.

But I wrote this.