When I married my dear cowboy I was living in a downtown penthouse. He lived out on the Eastern plains. He came from a blue collar family and I came from a white collar family. We met and married in a whirlwind of 8 days. That was 18 years ago and it has been a wild ride!

If there were ever two people more different in their ways it would be us. When we first married, we moved south of Pueblo, Colorado at the base of the Greenhorn Mountains, built a home from the land and named it the 'JLB Ranch'. Our neighbor, Roy, was an old cowboy who spotted a greenhorn (me) and proceeded to welcome me to the neighborhood by bringing me a dead rattlesnack in a bucket. (Yea that's right) I was the laughing stock of the neighbors for quite awhile until I took two of Roys sick calves and tried one winter to save their poor little lives. It was colder than... well there is that expression, which if you don't know what it is let us just leave it at that and move on. I would drive up with my cowboy and sit in the freezing barn and bottle feed the calves. (If it had been up to me they would have been inside the house.) I sat on the hay bale with one of them in front of me and pretended to be "mama". I grew to love that little critter and Roy grew to grudgingly respect me. When that calf died I cried so hard that I thought my heart had broken and Roy was softer in the handling of me after that. Still, I was living in the middle of "Nowhere" (actually the road was called Last car,) so that gives you an idea of where we were. My cowboy worked a hundred miles away and I wandered the property in my fur coat and my pointy boots until I saw a rerun of Green Acres. I realized that I was (Dear God) that Gabor woman and so I hung the coat in the closet and later donated it. I started researching cowgirls and country duds, and the attitudes of the neighbors began to rub off on me a bit. I could haul water into a cistern and bridle a horse. I stood fascinated as a 5 mile long swarm of bees went making their way across the property and into the valley. I saw a blonde bear at the end of the driveway and I wanted to take its picture, Yea I know, fearless. I stopped painting my fingernails and only polished my toes and then, only in summer. We threw a big party one weekend for my city friends and they commented how much I had changed. I was changing, and sometimes I embraced the change and sometimes I fought it with every city cell in me. My husband became a more well rounded person as well. When my family took him to the theatre for the first time in his life, he told me he thought he would hate it, but he loved it. He listens to classical music with me now and even seems to appreciate it. He will let me give him a facial on occasion and I will muck a stall now and clean a chicken coop without saying things like "ewww." Yea, we are becoming a melting pot of the best of the both of us and that gives me joy.

 Now we live closer to the city and a drive into town only takes a half hour. We are known to once a year go to the symphony or the theatre. Most nights we are home on our little farm, hanging in the garden or brushing the horses. My clothes are mostly jeans and boots and I couldn't wear a high heel if you paid me. I have one pair, never worn, in a box on the top shelf that stares down at me from time to time, as if to say "Give me to someone who appreciates me, TRAITOR!"   I think when I am done here I am going to pull that box down and take one last look at the life I have left behnd, because I am a country girl now and shoes like that belong to some poor girl in the city who doesn't have a clue.  The Goodwill store and teetering hearts on heels will be happy tomorrow.

 Happy trails to you sweetheart,because these feet were meant for boots of another kind.

I have always thought that weeds were alot like sin. How easily they grow under the worst of conditions. There can be a flood and the first thing that returns is a weed. There can be a drought and in the middle of the cracked and barren soil is a weed. The soil can be sand, clay, rock, where nothing of value grows except for,( you guessed it) weeds! While flowers and vegetables take nurturing and compost and nutrients, water and prayer. Lots of prayer. Weeds grow in every condition and in every place (much like hair when your older and it grows in WRONG places but that is a story for a different time)

So I started to research weeds from a medicinal stand point and I found some fascinating facts about the plants we call "weeds." They can be really good for you!  My favorite "weed" in the world, the dandelion. I personally do not understand why a dandelion is considered a weed. Have you ever seen a meadow of them in the sunlight? In their yellow glory they are magnificent!  Did you know they are full of Vitamin A and that they are great for you liver? That they compliment a salad with a tasty flavor and when steeped make a decent tea? There are a number of different weeds that bring a beautiful salad to a new level. Did you know that most weeds are edible? Ok I know that a lot of you are saying "Yuck" right about now and I understand. I think however it is important to keep in mind that with the bees collapsing in large part because of herbicides to kill weeds (Roundup being the most widely known and used) cancer rates soaring and babies being born with 250 chemicals in their umbillical chords, (which translates to a chemical bath invitro) it is incredibly important to stop using these unbelievably damaging chemicals and make peace with weeds.  There are ways to make peace. One is to accept that weeds are a part of life and can be managed without chemicals. You can burn them, use vinegar on them, salt them in a cracked driveway, or use them as I do as therapy and pull them out after a rain or a good soaking with the hose. You can grow them like flowers which some of them look just like flowers you buy, you can mow them low and use them for ground cover in your garden. I love dandelions because they feed my rabbit a healthy treat, they bring food for honey bees, they brighten up my yard and they make me smile in their cheerfulness! In the later stages they make a great photograph. Which always leaves me smiling.