Folding Hunting Tents and Deer Off

I just found this in my drafts folder and I don't want it to disappear so even though it's now January 4th, 2016 and I wrote this on a night in November of 2015, here it is.  It's like the Christmas card that gets sent in April, or something like that.  Without further ado, a piece of my mind and shots from my viewfinder...from October, but in January.  

My view right now is white hotel bedding and a remote that quite possibly holds more germs than anything I can currently muster up in my mind.  I try not to think about it, the funk of how many folks from different strokes have touched the hotel remotes.  But, hotel nights are my nights to catch up on emails while watching HGTV or the latest Real Housewives of Somewhere and that trumps the dirty remotes.  

On Halloween evening, we folded hunting tents because that seemed like a normal thing to do.  The view that night was just a little bit better than white hotel bedding.  I kept saying things like, "Love a duck the sky is doing some good things right now.  Hey are you looking?!  Look.  I mean really, that yellow tree is killing it over there.  The clouds!  I love the way the white tips look against the fall colors.  Are you looking?!"

The reaction I get to most of those spurts of sentiments over pretty that happen more often than I care to admit is the face of yes, yes Amy it's pretty.  But then it's followed by another look - a quick little glimmer of I love that you love that.

After we finished folding, I reminded Kiel that last year we folded the hunting tents together too.  We were fresh then, new in our finding out who we were and are together.  A quick little chuckle escaped as I then reminded him of what he said to me when we finished.

"Okay.  So you're capable."

I guess he didn't know he had found a girl who could do things like fold hunting tents since all we had really done up that point was go to Bison football game weekends together.  

Lucky him.  I guess folding hunting tents was a test and I passed.  

Little did he know at that time I would also be capable of a great many things as we progressed through the year.  Really, really important things like rearranging the kitchen counters and Roundup-ing weeds in landscaping rocks and Miracle Grow-ing the shit out of those baby growing trees.  

When spring rolled around, I secretly thought Kiel was potentially a little over the top in his care for the rows and rows of little evergreen trees that surround the yard.  He talked to them for Pete's sake and said things like, "That one was a good one.  He grew really well last year and now look at him.  He just couldn't make it through the winter."  

It's most likely no shock I found this mildly over the top.  

But now!

Now I've spent time caring for those trees.  Much time.  

So when a big buck deer decided it was in his rights as an antlered being to RUB all over the trees and go right ahead and take off branch after branch after branch and break the little trunks into these poor pitiful broken stalks...

I felt like it was just not acceptable.  Do you know how many years that little tree had to work to get that big?  Now I've joined the crazy team.  The team who is trying to grow trees in Montana which is apparently much harder than one would think.  I mean don't tell anyone I said this, but North Dakota might even be better at it.  And don't even get me started on the internet situation in the 406.  I used all the internet in one day.  How is that even possible?  But I digress.  

I hate to think that this tree right here is probably broken off right now, on the ground.  Just lying there because it couldn't fight against the big buck. 

I also hate to think about the Deer Off that we sprayed on Sunday in the 50+ mile an hour wind because we simply had to get it done before we left for travel working for weeks.  Deer Off smells like hell.  Like actual hell, or at least what I can imagine it might smell like in a place you are not wanting to be EVER and when it gets in your eyes, your eyes will burn and tingle for days.  

BUT the trees that buck hadn't gotten to already?!  They will survive dammit.  

Because I am capable. 

Plus this is pretty.