Country Life

I love living in the country. It is not a life for everyone.
Any kind of shopping is far away. Just running to the store for a missing ingredient can take up to an hour. I don't look on this as a terrible inconvenience; I think it makes me a more inventive cook.
There are other issues to country life - no trash pickup, slow internet connection, wild animals eating your garden, your flowers and sometimes, even your pets. There are no zoning restrictions so when your neighbors pile their yard with junk or shoot guns early on Sunday morning you just have to live with it.
But to me the tranquility and beauty of country life far outweighs these minor nuisances. When I awake in the mornings I look out my windows to see the sun rising through the trees. The view out any window of my house is not another house, but the woods. I have no window coverings because I have no close neighbors. I rarely hear traffic, only the melancholy cry of a distant train whistle or the eerie howl of the local coyotes.

Today while the wind blows arctic cold outside and tiny snow flakes swirl through the air, I sit inside and watch many kinds of birds outside the windows and feed the fire that warms me, my cats and my dog. I am grateful for my wonderful life.