fence row in winter

Around much of grampa's farm he had installed board fence for the horses. It was fence I painted frequently; and today, I spend much of my time painting picket fence around our home. Therapeutic, I guess.

There was one stretch of board fence that ran along the north line of his property, along the truckpatch; and along this board fence he had planted red pine in the 1960's. I walked this section frequently to and from grampa's, our home and the truckstop. I found it interesting in the winter to study the wildlife that found shelter and food in the dense brush and pine.....the tracks on the snow that disappeared into little snow caves created by arching branches covered from a new snowfall.

My cousins from North Carolina would come home over Christmas and spend a few weeks at my grandparents. We had a couple of traditions. One was to set up gramma's outdoor nativity set in her front yard. well, two sets really, some pieces were missing from each, so we did the best we could, but one set was about half-scale of the other. It was a very big baby Jesus that was born to the Virgin Mary, but we made due-and would construct elaborate stables because there was plenty of bails of straw. Another tradition was to "skate" (really slide around) on the frozen swamp, just down the road from gramp's house.

But one year, we thought we'd start a new tradition and that was to cut down our own Christmas tree. The only available trees were along that board fence row. So, saw and sled in tow, a few of us set out to get the family tree. We succeeded in taking down the tree, strange-it looked more glorious in the fence row, than the house-which is probably why it didn't stay.