Helping Out Mother Nature

 When it got to be that time of the year, when winter was thinking of fading into spring, my cousins and I gave Mother Nature a hand in the process as it seemed pretty slow to us. Because we spent lots of time outside anytime of the year-lots of time in the fields and pastures, whether attempting to feed my older brother's black angus as pictured above or running through hayfields or running to our clubhouse or down to the creek, when the thought of spring was in the air, we pitched in to help that happen even faster than Mother Nature had planned on making it happen.

Sometimes we'd start in the driveways. We'd go into my aunt's garage and bring out whatever we could find to chop through the ice and shovel the remaining snow away. Guess we thought we'd then be able to ride our bikes. Whatever we thought we'd be out there working hard with shovels and hoes. Part of the fun was etching little streams out in the melting snow, leading that water to a bigger pool of water and then, jump in it. That got rid of many a puddle. Sometimes we'd chop away at a clump of ice so hard that our faces would turn red. It became quite warm out there. Lots of laughs. Lots of fun but we never succeeded in bringing our bikes out until Mother Nature stepped in and did her thing. She was always equipped to take us from one season to the next without using hoes or rakes or shovels or pitch forks. Her tool chest, including the winds and rains and snowfalls and sunshine, always worked better than our tools. 

But we so enjoyed helping her out, especially when we'd play along a stream that ran alongside my grandparents' farmhouse. It came from a field across the road, ran through a tunnel under the road, alongside the farmhouse and down to the creek. The water would get so high in the spring that we could race little twigs down it to the flat rock getting soaking wet in the process. That is until Mother Nature either made it snow and brought the temperature down making that stream freeze or turning the temperature up high making it all dry up. 

Either way, Mother Nature always ruled the show.