It has been weeks since I saw my shadow. Did I fire him in a fit of pique or is it just this endless Tolkien gray. Or maybe the Martha Stewart beige.
Though truthfully I may have seen my shadow on that one sunny morning the other day but I was so involved in the feeling the sun that I forgot to look for him.
Why am I referring to my shadow as he when I am a she?
I was sitting next to Sheila yesterday afternoon as she napped in her enormous bed. She grunts when I sit down, then grunts again when I lean on her as though she were an enormous firm slightly prickly cushion. She went to sleep. I marveled at her breathing for a while, her eyes closed and her breathing slow. She uses all the space in her lungs when she is resting, her breaths deep and long and strong. I checked the messages on my phone for a while – my legs stretched out, boots crossed at the ankles. Sitting in that dry warm space with my breathing cushion behind me. Later I slid down further cuddling into my pig and wondered about things, my fork leaning on the barn wall untended. The dogs chose corners. Tia the heifer calf, perky and well again came in to the barn at one point and observed us for a while, chewing her cud.
Have you ever wondered why humans have eyebrows. I mean all animals have eyelashes but very few have eyebrows. In fact I can’t think of any eyebrowed animals off hand. Boo has a couple of hairs sticking straight out above his eyes, where his designer thought about eyebrows, I guess. 
I look forward to growing old – I am going to pencil in bold surprised eyebrows and everyone will look at me wondering what I KNOW. Because with that look of secretive surprise obviously I must know something.
We all have eyebrows and eyelashes. Even the people we do not know. The strangers that might frighten us. All of us, unless they were burned off in a fireworks accident of course. (We are talking about my little brother who is not so little anymore). OR here is the other time he burned his eyebrows completely off, with no help from his big sister.
Though looking back that far in the archives I want to rewrite many of the old pages. But that would be cheating.
Anyway – just some light reading – to get us through another sepia day.
The weather today will seek a high of 38f/3C at the moment it is 33f. The wind will be the nor’west. I will fill up all the big heated water barrels today because we will sink below freezing for a few days after this, rendering the hoses useless.
Have a lovely day.
love celi
The Kitchen's Garden 
68 responses to “I have no shadow”
My dog has eyebrows. I will send you a photo. He is naughty and very affectionate. I didn’t enjoy reading Tolkien so I think I would not like your clouds/sky right now. I love the idea of sitting against a deeply breathing (yogic) Sheila. I have often noticed that if only I would breathe like my dog, when he settles to sleep, I would be a happy person. All the way in. All the way out.
Yes, those are the Tolkien clouds, sitting like a lid on top of us. Where are those bally short people with the big feet when we need them.
Ha ha – I think in Tolkein you’d be Cecilia the White 😉
Cecilia the White – that has a certain ring to it! c
[J] Now I know why I so want a pig! I may have to make do with leaning back into the wooliness of one our sheep – one of the older, wiser and more patient ewes or an ram with nothing much to occupy him outside that all-important season of the year. It’s have to be during a sunny dry spell, though, otherwise I’d get soggy lying on the ground. Or I need to get on and build that all-purpose shed, to be used for over-wintering some of the sheep, or lambing, or lying back, leaning into the wooliness of one of the older, wiser and more patient sheep, looking out across the Sound of Eriskay to the hills and glens of South Uist, and letting my thoughts free with the scudding clouds. Thanks Celi!
I had a big old sheep whose name was Mama – she hated everyone but me – she always had quads. She was a big wooly one. That shed sounds like a good idea though I bet your sheep are a hardy lot.
They don’t need the shed – I do!
My beagles have whisker like things above their eyes – so I guess that would be eyebrows. Mom plucked hers to a point she had none by age 30 – so she always penciled hers in. And when I wanted my ‘shaped’ she refused to thin mine out – and thank goodness because to this day I still have very nice natural brows. No pencil required!
And again – I never thought I would say this – but relaxing with a big beautiful pig named Sheila sounds like a piece of heaven.
When i was a kid a friend of mine plucked half an eyebrow right out by mistake – at lunchtime – at school. We had to pluck the rest out and she drew her eyebrows in for the longest time – she is an Opera Singer now.
Great stories about your brother, T! I would have liked to have grown up on the beach. Sounds wonderful.
It was. I am beach born. c
Many years ago, my beloved elderly uncle in his nineties, God rest his soul, was living in assisted living, and years after his beloved wife Dottie died, began “dating” another elderly woman in the facility. We all thought he’d gone off his nut, as we adored Aunt Dottie, a woman always “well put together,” as they say. He brought this new woman to visit us in his big Cadillac (she was very nice.) I and my sisters were accepting of this arrangement, as it was none of our business, whatever floats your boat, etc, but still we marveled at her bright blue painted on eyebrows. “Dottie must be spinning in her grave,” we muttered. Maybe she was only, as you say, being bright and bold, and maybe she “knew something!” We’ll never know. But I have always wondered why blue?
Blue! She had probably worn it all her adult life. Plus as you get older you do not see colours as being as bright as they were. The colours will fade a bit in our eyes and maybe we will over compersate.c
It is something special to bond with an animal, to touch, speak with, and sit quiety, enjoying the moment. I shall cherish, my entire life, that I have laid with deer when they were young, and walked with them in the woods, sitting with them while they rested, chewing their cud. We could all do with “ruminating” while in nature… or with your favorite pig. Sheila is special indeed.
Interesting about eyebrows. Deer have the slightest eyebrows when they are little, and they lose them as they mature. They develop the most lovely eye “circles” – lighter hair around the eyes as they grow their winter coats.. Eye “dots” above the eye on many mammals (to appear like an eye higher up) are a great camouflage to protect the actual eye. I wonder why humans have them?
So very true, all humans do have eyelashes and brows…just one of many things that make us so alike rather than looking at the very few things that might make us different… I have watched the steady decline of my brows for quite a few years now. It started from the already thin outer corners (I over-plucked long ago) and the middle onward is now clearly thinning. I have a hard time matching the pencil color to what is left, as what is left is not really the same as the color of the hair on my head 😉
I so love the stories of your life Celi, and how you write them. I am waiting patiently for your memoir. No rush, as I know you are busy with life, but,
maybe in time, sometime in the future. XO
I too was wondering why you referred to your shadow as he? 🙂 Laura
I loved the stories about your little brother, made me laugh. Thanks 😀
We have a curly coated golden retriever. Her eyebrows were so curly when she was a puppy that the vet giggled in delight every time we made a visit. It happened so often that I was beginning to become sensitive about our sweet dog. Isn’t it funny that we humans are worried about what other humans think of our pets?
A sepia day! Thought you might like that as a description versus a grey day
Remember the choice is yours…. Be happy!
>
I’m pretty sure our dogs, all nine of them, have eyebrows. But eyebrows or no eyebrows once again you paint, both in words and pictures, a delightful picture of life on the farm.
Shadows are like that, incorrigibly petulant; unless it’s a sunny day they tend to hide under the bed and stay there. I had a dog once with what I perceived as eye brows, not specific hairs but a brow that protruded over the eyes and was of a lighter colour than the rest of his hair.
After a day of light snow yesterday, the first we’ve had since before Christmas, the sun is shining again this morning and the temperature will rise to plus 2c before it drops below freezing again until at least the weekend. Hope you have a great day! ~ Mame 🙂