Opinion : The 3 Seasons of country living - Beauty, Snow and Mud

The most fascinating thing about living in the country, at least to me, is the way you are so closely linked to the seasons.

In fall, as you drive through the country, if you are fortunate like we are, you are surrounded by trees and the leaves changing. You can see the fields bursting at the seams with their crops and you often see a farmer on his tractor hauling his bounty.

In the summer everything is green and all the ravishes of the winter have been erased.The trees are in full bloom, the grass waves gently in the breeze, everything for the most part is peaceful and relaxing to watch.

Winter and Spring, now they are two of the seasons I most dread.

Winter can be such a bear out here. If you are fortunate enough, you get a few inches of snow at a time, and have time to clear it off before the next batch arrives. It will also be small enough that when you have to drive to town through it, your car won't get stuck in the road.

If it's one of those icy years, you soon realize that you are a great driver or you become friends with the tow truck driver!

Then there's the matter of making it up the driveway.

One of those things we DIDN'T consider when creating the driveway.

We had this silly idea that we wanted to preserve as much of the landscape as we could when we put our house out here.

So being the cityiots that we are, we said, just dump the gravel right there, over that hill that has a slight angle leaning toward the south.

The driver did as we said, and we were set...for many winters of hooking the car to the pickup and pulling ourselves out of the "baseball field" as we call it.

In the Spring to compensate for the melting snow running off, toward the "baseball field" we compensate by driving on the north side of the driveway, thus creating a muddy trench that will swallow your tires. This spring is no exception.

I swear, if our tires hadn't been laced on really tight, we'd have lost them in the driveway. Have you ever seen those tires half buried in the dirt at the parks so kids can jump on them? A farmer thought of that. It was just easier to leave them in the driveway than to pull them out of the mud.

I'm sure some guy from town drove out, saw them there and thought, "A new environmentally friendly toy for the kids,how clever of the farmer to recycle!" He just didn't know that you can only dig your tires out so many times before you say, "they look pretty good, right where they are."

After dodging puddles and making trenches for water to run down hills out of the driveway and parking, we finally broke down and called our "Mud Be Gone" company aka Coots Materials who sent a kind gentleman out to drop a load of road grade gravel in our driveway.

Thinking we'd get by with one load like we do every few years, we ordered one load.

The truck came and the driver said, "You need one load just in this bottom half."

We sighed. We looked at the checkbook, we chipped the mud off of our shoes and decided, this is just ridiculous!

We need to be able to walk to the cars on dry land, since we haven't gotten that walking on water thing down yet.

So we ordered another load of gravel.

The second load arrived.

There is STILL mud in our drive.

I absolutely REFUSE to call Larry out at Coots AGAIN! While I like the folks out there very much, I am digging my heels in the dirt, er, mud and refuse to give in to Mother Nature, who I am sure by now has laughed herself silly at our antics of survival out here.

Having lived out here our first decade now, I know that it will get better.

We WILL be able to drive to town in cars that are only dust covered and our black car will at the very least look only like a two tone car instead of the solid mud color it now sports.

I know that eventually we will have to visit John's Tire Service and Kip will shake his head as we say, "Our car is shaking, we think we need a tire."

He will then pop off the tire and shake his head and I'm sure he's thinking by now, "Those idiots. How many times do I have to tell them you can't off road in a sedan!" He will start knocking off a mountain of mud that has lodged itself between the rim of the tire and the thingamajiggy that it's mounted on.

John's Tire will pop the tire back on, Kip will again grin and shake his head. We will drop a few bills on the counter, walk past the pile of dried mud the crew is now shoveling out of the garage, blush in embarrassment dive into the car and leave as quickly as possible.

We will then head down the highway, and feel like we are driving a new car again. We will turn of on our gravel aka muddy road, and go up our newly graveled driveway, and tip toe on our stepping stones that are still floating in water, walk into the house and STILL be amazed that we have mud on our shoes.

But we will look out the window and know as soon as the trees are green, it will again be safe to venture out on dry land.

So Mom Nature, enjoy your nap, I'm sure you are making plans for next winter and spring at our expense.

*Cityiots-People from the city either living in or driving through the country and doesn't understand the rules of living in the country...we STILL fit in this category!