Ballade.

May 19, Avella.

Not a song - a beautiful word, a ballad, - but a stroll, in French.
It's a yukky day and we're stuck tire-deep in mud (and it had to be the day when I wanted to unhitch and go drive around the area where I had found the house of my dreams last year while looking and wishing on the web, an old remodeled farmhouse west of Pittsburgh with seven acres of pasture and a creek frontage; when am I going to be back in the area? we had it all planned out over the CB radio on the way over.) But I wouldn't give in to a mood to suit the circumstances, so I put Nicolas/Peanut/Mingo on my back and took Dylan by the hand and off we went slip sliding in the mud down a dirt road at the back of the lot and we had an adventuresome walk, met a spider (Dylan and I,) saw a black dog (all three of us,) picked up a branch to use as a walking stick (Dylan,) listened to the wind in the trees (Dylan and I, for Mingo/Peanut/Nicolas was asleep by then) and the sound of the stream and the birds and the trucks on the invisible road on the other side of the creek.