A Whiff of Diesel Exhaust

A whiff of diesel exhaust perfumed my supper preparations yesterday. I wasn't puzzled for long. Paul Mallow, who ranches the acreage to either side of us, had turned up to mow his hillside as the day cooled down. He was dragging his cutter behind a tractor.

Something needed oiling, in our opinion. There was a whinny to the snicker-snack of the equipment that didn't sound just right. He mowed for a couple hours and barely put two rings around the whole field, so extensive and hilly is it. This morning he has just resumed.

The cutting will be followed by baling, and I'll get to see how the great standing rolls of hay are produced. Paul has already cut this field once, and the hay stands behind the fence along the road. Jasmine disappears into it at will.

In the suburbs, we hated the sound of constant lawn maintenance that disrupted every hopeful quiet moment at home. But here it was just the sound of our environment. I wish I could lure him across the road to our two fields, which we attack with ordinary lawn equipment.

As the evening paled, I sat on the porch and watched a doe and two fawns snack and browse around the apple tree. The deer eats an apple the way we would if we had no hands: munching off one surface, dropping the apple, and picking it up again at a slightly different rotation, where there is still more meat.