I gave a shot today. I had to gauge, angle, stab, and press. An action I've feared for years, I can't believe how easy it was. Though, as I turned to walk inside and throw the syringe into a safe trashcan, my hands shook a bit. The mortal shell is so flimsy. The shock of the thing was just how easily a needle slips in. Its nearly nothing.

Last night Dear Husband had to dispatch a chicken with an ax. It was an emergency situation performed in the dark quickly as an act of compassion. He is no hunter and hates killing things with axes. After, the head is always such a pretty thing in its grotesque and horribly wrong way. How can there be such a pretty wrong thing? A right thing in a wrong place, I suppose. You're left staring, a bit in shock. Though, not so shocked or as staring as the chicken.

I've been changing, losing my interests in roses and vegetables. I would like to fall-plant beets, carrots, and spinach to harvest overwinter this year. I will always plant basil, tomatoes, and cucumbers in the summer. But I felt nothing but bored harvesting green beans yesterday. There is about $50 worth of over ripe beans in a basket on my kitchen floor. And I don't care. I don't care about the unharvested chard. I don't care about vegetables so much anymore.

Turns out, I am a carnivore. "I NEED MEAT" to quote my Dear Girl when she was only two. Maybe the passion of our personalities burns through carbohydrate too fast? I used to think I wanted to grow most of my vegetables. And, knowing the fundamentally basic way both my husband and I don't want to kill anything, I planned to always buy meat. Now that I have experience growing vegetables and meat, I find I am FAR more particular how the animals are handled. Their lives and variables are long and matter a lot more. I can trust farmers to not spray their zuchinni. Beyond that--meh--who cares if they talk nice, hustle with an ax at the right moment, are attentive to the subtle details of vegetal existence? I find I don't. And no vegetable is richer in bio-available minerals than raw milk. Fresh eggs from free hens, a moral roast, meat for less than a hundred dollars a pound. Even though vegetables are beginning to rival meat in price. I suppose its time to step up a rung on the great ladder of farming wimpiness.