Zoe has been in Taiwan for two years. She came home for my niece’s wedding last summer, and we spent a good couple of weeks together, and there is skype. With the twelve hour time difference, we often spoke in my early morning while she ate noodles for dinner. But I’d not hugged her in fourteen months! That is a LONG time.
Now she has returned, my girl. She completed her contract at the school where she taught kindergarten for the last year and now has landed here at Ancient Ponies Farm. Her plan now is to live here for a good while, at least through gardening next summer. She wants to learn to drive the tractor so she can plough snow and move piles of manure. She wants to build our gardens and muck our stalls. Hallelujah is all I can say.
I can hardly express how nice it is to have her here. She’s so interested in everything and enthusiastic. We’ve been cooking up a storm, eating out on our lovely hillside, going for horseback rides and doing chores. Yesterday she went out on Jasper for her first solitary ride ever. How nice for me to see my daughter saddle up a horse and go off into the woods on her own. Here is a picture of our ride together yesterday evening.
Last weekend we left the farm and drove to Philadelphia for my nephew, Emile’s wedding. It’s the first time I had left the place over night since moving in. Erika and Ryan house/dog/horse sat, taking the dogs on long walks and even going riding a bit. The wedding was lovely and such a chance to connect with old friends and family.
My mom and I drove home on the day of the eclipse, with Zoe staying an extra day to hang out with her cousins and aunts. 
What a feeling for me to be coming home to this place. I had not left so I had not experienced that THIS is what I am coming home to. On the way home, mom and I stopped at my CSA to pick up my share just as the eclipse was peaking. They had set out a wheelbarrow with water in it so we could watch the eclipse in the reflection. With bags of vegetables, I took my mom to her house and then arrived home. Ahhh…..