Our barn isn’t much to look at. It’s mostly white corrugated metal, and the gutters are old and pulling away from rotting parts of the roof. I’ll need to do some repair work out there this this summer.
There was a time -- to be honest it was back in the days when the economy was good, which now feels like long, long ago -- that we must have had a few extra dollars on hand and we considered replacing the barn altogether. But we realized that the structure is basically good. Our critters are snug and dry in there. We decided that we kind of like the ratty old thing, so we left it as-is.
One morning this week I headed out to feed the barn animals and I saw that the light was really wonderful. We have prayer flags (gifts brought by our Tibetan friends when they came out for a picnic last summer) strung from fruit trees near our garden up to the rafters of the barn. Something about the scene -- like our not-perfect-but-good-enough barn -- just felt right...maybe a little ramshackle and rickety, but right.
I went into the barn and saw Pumpkin lounging in the sun near the critter door. She was quite content, and I found myself a comfortable bale of straw and just sat for a while.
It was a swell beginning to the day.
