THANKFUL THURSDAY

This last weekend I was Graced to have an opportunity to visit an old homestead up by the mountain.  The place really isn’t that old.  But it looked old and it felt like antiquity facing me head on. It felt like a ghost-stead, a place where children have grown up playing in the old ways. It felt like sweat dripping from sun darkened skin. It felt like blisters, slivers from unforgiving wood and rock and shovels and hammers.  I saw the ghosts of baby horses being born, stallion trumpeting, mares lazying underneath a favorite tree. 

I saw the pond under the palo verde tree with the crappie coming to the surface for their nightly meal.  I saw grandma sitting in her chair watching the horse training goings on.

The trees were towering over in a protective dance. 

The aloe vera plants were taking over and the yucca plant was the size of a small tree.  They were dry and in need of a caring hand, yet they were thriving non the less.  The house was gone, torn down and hauled away.  There had been well over 100 wood posts that were either ripped from their beds or dried up and leaning over. The fencing was tangled up in knots or missing altogether.  Shades for livestock still stood unwavering…

 Still it was home.  It was my sweat, my blisters, my pond and the trees I planted. It was my blood sweat and tears. It was my child who played and grew up there, it was my baby horses who were born there, It was my stallion who stood sentinel over our domain. 

It was my homestead.

I’m so thankful that I had the honor to be part of this wonderful little homestead which I eked out of the rocky cactus ridden desert with my bare hands.

(Pictured China Rose – Asad’s 1/2 sister at east end of our property)

Burdened with bruises, blisters, and slivers, unending cactus thorns,  and aching muscles.  My daughter at age 12  helped me with her own bare hands to dig the 16 inch holes into the cement hard cliche one inch at a time and place every post and every tree into the earth right beside me.  I am thankful for that life’s experience and that I had the opportunity in life to have taken barren land and turn it into a thriving home and that it now is awaiting patiently to be a new someone’s beloved homestead. I am also so very thankful that the new owners are cleaning it up and restoring back into the beautiful sanctuary it once was.

How many folks live to see their homestead resurrected into a new and shining home.  For this I am grateful.

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