Solstice

warm day with family.

8 inches of snow from a couple of days ago. 10 more inches have fallen today with a possibility of 10 more tonight.

happy solstice.

Home-Cooked Bath Toys

new uses for old jeans! i've been wanting more non-toxic bath toys to complement our collection of wooden goodies from the unfinished mill store that have served us thus far. today, i added this "family" (with spoon, of course - the current favorite toy) to the collection.

Boo's Basket

working on a basket made with pine needles i collected with my aunt boo last year, as she moved toward her death from dementia. we walked together along with her husband, ben, through long-leaf pine woods in florida. she saw me gathering the needles, and she joyfully began gathering them, too, though she didn't understand what i meant them for. at home that evening, toward the end of my visit with them, i invited her to help me take each needle out of the jumble of needles and lay them out straight, so they'd travel safely on the plane without getting broken. she sat beside me at their little kitchen table, and, though the disease had stripped her of her language, much of her reasoning, her memory, and the ability to simply work on most things competently, she understood what i was doing with the needles. we worked together, silently, while ben watched the news, her hands and mine taking turns as we slowly untangled the web of needles and, one by one, laid them in order.

boo passed over october of last year. finally, now, i'm weaving these needles together into our basket.

Thanksgiving

morning train ride to the city south of us. boy toddled up and down our car, smiling at every person on it, receiving smiles and conversation in exchange. at long last, napped in my arms, the rising sun flickering through the trees onto his face, the side of his hand.

so much of the journey was through wild land. quiet streams winding through the woods, bare branches webbing the sky. water lying still, frozen in its place, holding the sun's light on the earth.

we traveled behind the factories, the ugly places: laundromats, self-storage, their dumpsters and heating vents. occasionally, a glimpse of the wealthy - a house on a hill above the tracks, a row of neat victorians a few blocks away.

so few people out, towns nearly vacant, roads empty. one lonely car at the railroad crossing waiting for us to pass. storefronts all closed and quiet. just the rattle of the train on its tracks, the conductor's jarring announcements of stations, the passing trees.

Cranberry Pole Beans

our cranberry pole beans being shelled by my mum during her most recent visit here.

Breath

nursing my son in bed tonight, he twice tilted his sleepy head up to my face, eyes closed, pausing for a moment. his breath - moist, milky, warm - blanketed my mouth, my nose in the dark and quiet of our room.

all of his life, the moments in which i have felt his breath have reminded me of his sacredness, have awoken me out of the rush of my days. creator's breath itself, the air that sustains this little boy, moment by moment. that i can feel it, breathe it in to my own body, is astonishing to me.

Lessons

today's writer's almanac poem:

Lessons
by Pat Schneider

I have learned
that life goes on,
or doesn't.
That days are measured out
in tiny increments
as a woman in a kitchen
measures teaspoons
of cinnamon, vanilla,
or half a cup of sugar
into a bowl.

I have learned
that moments are as precious as nutmeg,
and it has occurred to me
that busy interruptions
are like tiny grain moths,
or mice.
They nibble, pee, and poop,
or make their little worms and webs
until you have to throw out the good stuff
with the bad.

It took two deaths
and coming close myself
for me to learn
that there is not an infinite supply
of good things in the pantry.

Frost

first thorough frost last night. boy and i walked out through the yard in the early morning, he in his fresh clothes and coat and hat, me in my pajamas and boots. picked up a frosted maple leaf for him to hold, crispy and covered in ice crystals, and his hand melted it as we walked. sun just touching the tops of the trees.
passed the pile of soil that he played in, barefoot, two days ago. the ridges where his feet and hands made shallow craters were capped with frost, like a mountain range viewed from above, dark valleys and silver ridges.
three baby mice and counting.
harvested our butternut squash (14) and pumpkin (1!) two days ago.

Mouse

mice have moved in to our kitchen, following the warmth.

set a havahart trap last night and found a little baby one in it this morning. all head and tail and feet. it was watching me, wide-eyed, when i opened the cabinet door to check the trap.

brought it down the road, boy and i, and i sat with the trap door open for a few minutes as it got its bearings, as it met the outdoors, plants, earth. then in one large, clumsy hop, it left the trap, and scurried under the virginia creeper vines. i put a little pile of almonds on the ground near where it hid.

now i'm at home, eating my oatmeal, and a little creature, new to the world, is miles from its mother and her milk and their home.

Sunflowers

early morning stroll around the yard with the babe, greeting the cut flower bed, the squash and pumpkin patch, young plum grove, vegetable garden, apple trees. visited my sit spot for the first time in months, the old pine now sheltering a storage shed for family's work trucks.

remembered the exercises to open up awareness: paying attention to each of my senses in turn, lifting myself out of my thoughts and into the moment, the day as it brightens and warms. dog meandered in to my vision, a dark little shape on the dew-wet lawn. he paused, blind boy, lifted his nose to the air, caught our scent, and wagged his tail lazily.

a songbird landed on the garden fence. dew drops hanging from the fence wires glistened each time the bird shifted position. a few moments later, the dill, tall and lovely, was a dancer, shimmering alone in the still garden, and then the little bird that had been perched low on it flew up and away.

the sun rising slowly above the pines. dark band of trees like a theater curtain upside-down, lowering away from the sun, the sun taking its place in the sky.

sunflowers, the small row i planted this year, all in their bulging, pregnant state, flowers giving way to seed. like adolescent creatures, bedecked yet in the beauty of youth, looking down at the earth in bewilderment of their blossoming selves.

Knitted hat

dear friend visited last Thursday and walked me through knitting a hat. here it is, my first hat!

Sauerkraut-making season

harvested 5 of our cabbages, totaling 17 lbs. husband cleaned them off, weighed them - a 6 lb-er!

shredded them...

and crushed them in the our harsch crock until their liquid rose above the level of the cabbage. added brine, and it's good to go! will ferment for six weeks in the crock, then will go into the fridge for us to eat.

Sourdough!

Harvesting Garlic & Onions

Finally harvested garlic and onions yesterday, between downpours. Stalks were browning on the garlic a couple of weeks ago and it was ready to come out, but supposed to harvest after a few sunny days, which we never got, so out it came yesterday, soggy with a few of the stalks starting to rot. Onions came out right on time, when their stalks had all been lying on the ground about ten days.

Amazed again this year at the baby worm nurseries created by the garlic roots. Such tiny little things, just about 3/4 of an inch long, and almost traslucent some of them, with grown worms wrapped around the roots near them. I suppose that perhaps the garlic roots, being so thin and dense, are ideal for baby worms because they can intertwine amongst them and thus be safer from moles and other predators.

Father-in-law lent us the back of his garage to dry them in, since our porch is much more exposed to the humid weather. We set up a construction fan to blow on all of the plants so they wouldn't rot from all the water in them, and today they are drying and beautiful. 160 garlic bulbs, 50 onions.

Hornworms

the hornworms have found the tomatoes, and the wasps have found the hornworms.

more rain, more rain, more rain. summer squash and zucchini have been putting out many blossoms for a month now, but we've only gotten one vegetable from each plant so far. the rain two summers ago also created this issue. i've read that rain can cut down on the visits from bees, so i've been pollinating them this week with a paintbrush to see if that will help. but each time i do it, the blossoms all have at least one bee drinking away within, so i don't see how lack of pollinators could be the problem.

house wrens are busy feeding their little ones, woodpecker (downy or hairy? i still confuse them) has been making daily visits to our suet feeder (with the suet from our grass-fed cow), and black raspberries are ripening all around us!

Birds

a couple of days ago, i spotted a large moth resting on the inside of our porch screen, so i opened the door and, snapping the screen with my fingers, sent it on its way. it flew in its wild moth pattern toward a nearby tree, and a small bird shot down from the sky and proceeded to chase it. the moth zig-zagged and swirled successfully for a few moments, but then the bird caught it and shot back over the roof of our house to wherever it was going.

our house wrens' babies hatched last week. can you hear them cheeping?

Milky Way

back from my brief unintentional hiatus.

have decided to take a few things off my plate, in order to free myself up to be more present in the moments of my life. to that end, i will only be writing on this blog once a week or so for a little while, at least until i get past the sense of responsibility to write daily. may return to writing here daily, or may not, will depend upon what it takes for me to slow down in my life.

looked up at the stars tonight, so many and so bright after weeks of cloudy evenings. saw the milky way with cignus flying through it for the first time in months, not having given the night sky much time for a while. thought of how looking at the milky way is looking out towards the edge of our galaxy, through the densest portion of it. remembered how, in the past, the milky way reminded me how awesomely huge the world is, how alone and insignificant we are, compared to the rest of the universe.

tonight, though, something held me back from feeling these things. though i thought of them, they failed to raise me up into the skies, into the dark expanse of space, away from all of my petty worries and plans, as has always happened in the past. i remained steadfastly my self standing on my porch on this night in this place. it was as though there were a string pulled too taught to let me fly off into the depths of wonder and imagining, too taught to let me rise above where i was.

Ho-Hum

a good day, but no inspiring ideas to write about. tremendous lightning and thunderstorm last night, rain all day today with thunder at times. tornado watch.

joyful to have plans to stay soon at our beloved pinestead. looking forward to taking in the chickens, fields, brooks, mountains with our boy now, seeing it all anew.

caught a honeybee on the toe of my sandal on tuesday, and neither of us ended up happy. today's rain, pooled on our porch, was refreshing for my swollen, itchy foot.

didn't make it out to garden today, but started working on some baby blankets to sell at our town's farmer's market.

Baby

husband's sister and her husband had their babe this morning. little wee fellow lying in the crook of his mum's arm when i went to visit them in the hospital. little ancient person, fresh from the womb, so wise and tiny compared to us.

Veggies & Bugs

cukes are coming, cabbage is heading, summer squash and zucchini are here, lettuce is gone. potatoes need to be hilled, tomatoes need a new level of string, cukes and pole beans need some guidance to find their trellises. potatoes, cabbage, strawberries all have their unique bugs. peas continue to ripen for the boy to eat.

beautiful, ravenous young caterpillars on our milkweed the other day. still waiting to see monarchs on our milkweed and coneflower.

Away

power was out, then i was away. will write soon.

Moon

big orange moon in the sky tonight. once it held its proper place as the only light in the sky at night, the one light shining on the earth in the night, the one bright place for the creatures on the earth to look up to.

Spider

brushing my hair tonight in the bathroom, i startled at the sight of a daddy-long-legs clinging to the underside of the hot water handle. i have a great deal of appreciation and respect for spiders, and generally am glad to see them, but the positioning of this one, right where a hand could grasp it unknowingly, caught me off guard. i watched it for a bit while watching my insides roll. it struggled to keep its grip on the metal handle, then it pulled its abdomen up to the handle, appearing to sit down, and drank from a droplet of water that was clinging there.

after a brief drink, it struggled and finally succeeded in fixing a bit of webbing to the handle, lowered itself down in jerks to the sink, walked to a larger pool of water, and appeared to sit down there as well, just at the very edge of the water, and drink more. it occurred to me that it may come to the sink routinely, whenever it hasn't seen enough insect action to keep it hydrated.

what a world we live in, where during the whirlwind of our days, completely unbeknownst to us, spiders come to our sinks to drink.

This is it

sunny, breezy, bright day.

started re-reading zinn's Wherever You Go, There You Are, to help pull me out of my frenzied busy-ness of late. startling how vivid my moments become when i once again remember to wake up in them, to remind myself that "this is it", this one moment here is all that exists right now, and is all that will ever exist. grateful for exposure to these ancient teachings.

Flowers

walked beside the river today, me, the boy, and the dog. as the trail curled around the quarry, a sea of waving queen anne's lace greeted us. a blanket of snowy lace, two and a half feet off the ground, bobbing and ducking, like a painting of childhood.

driving home tonight from a movie in the park in town, i took in the view just before our road: dark fields, dark trees, dusky pastel sky, just evening as far as i could see. grateful to live in a place where there are still some areas free of houses and lights.

Dusk

living in the busy-ness of my days, forgetting to write.

lovely day, sun and breezes and birds singing.

evening on porch with husband, boy, and dog. watched the trees move, admired the land and garden, passed the boy back and forth as we dined and drank rose wine. two cedar waxwings visited the apple boughs attached to our porch, giving us both a glorious close-up view of their "elegance," as my husband described them (after exclaiming "what the hell are those?!" upon first spotting them).

Ducks & Dragonflies

cool day, only around 80, with refreshing breezes throughout the land.

waded with a friend and our little ones in the river this afternoon, my boy splashing and kicking studiously. tiny benign black flies nearly carpeted the water around us, unfazed by our splashes, moving only if we walked through their gatherings. ducks joined us, preening and letting out quiet "wak-wak"s as they glided by. one stretched her neck out parallel to the water, swinging back and forth, gobbling up the tiny flies.

a pair of mating dragonflies alighted on my boy's forehead, to the innocent delight of my friend's child.

Hot

missed a day again.

heavy air, two downpours this afternoon. sunflowers i planted 3 weeks late are up two inches, growing rapidly. pulled all the lettuce today, some of it already bolted. pulled one basil that was bolting & made & froze a batch of pesto.

started a batch of sourdough from my sister's starter, soaked some lentils yesterday to sprout, and made my first batch of beef stock from Nourishing Traditions. also started baby blanket for a friend with a little one right around the corner.

spent much of today feeling stagnant and unproductive.

Comfort

back home on the train today. more trees, houses, world for the little one to admire.

dog having an underfoot day at home, in front of me each step i took, rarely leaving me for his own company. i was fine for a while, then my patience evaporated and i ran him from the room. working in the garden with husband later, my frustration extended to the mosquitoes, the tomato suckers i was pruning, everything that posed any obstacle to me.

asked for help to move through the lesson. remembered to be thankful for the plants, for our relation to everything, to not simply take them for granted, and this pulled me up from my fire a bit. then my stomachache arrived, worsening over the next couple of hours, spending the very last of my patience. but when it subsided, i was given a new kind of life, a joyfulness to simply be comfortable, to be able to experience ease and relaxation, pleasure. i had all the patience and compassion in the world for the dog, boy, husband, everything that makes life rich.

Family

gathering at my mum's in the city today, another hearty dose of family.

heavy air, still.

sweaty sitting babes lurching over their crossed legs, playing at crawling. filled the little pool to cool them, little feet splashing, disrupting the afternoon with bubbles, kicks. their 6-month-old glee showering us all in drops of water.

Visiting

missed yesterday.

took a train with the boy today, visiting dear family not seen for many years, and some seen recently.

boy watched the world go by through the train window: trees, waterways, small town centers, clouds.

waiting on a babe to come. he's starting and pausing on his passage here, determining his own time.

Camping

camping ended early, lots of rain falling and forecast.

husband and i continued our vacation at home, to the exclusion of computers. so much time freed up by not checking on emails, weather, etc. we've been more present with each other, as well, since neither of us was on the computer. back on today, but i'm considering taking routine email/computer hiatuses in the future.

beautiful camping site, right on the lake as always. site was more beautiful, bright, and expansive than the photos look, but they give a fair idea.







young cardinal visited today, begging off its father. a bland-looking little one, yet to wear the distinction of black at the base of an orange bill.

Fire & Fly

much excitement at the neighbors' house today, band of boys testing their limits and having their first encounter with police and firefighters.

during the drama, a fly sat on the tip of a rhododendron leaf out our window. green grass and dark shadows beyond, it was occupied with cleaning its legs, cleaning under it wings, utterly undisturbed by the human fiasco.

like any other creature in the world, taking the time to care for itself.

camping until next wednesday, will write when i return.

Seedlings!

Pickling cucumbers!

Cabbages! (Left is one we planted from seed, middle and right are from the market, to replace the groundhog's share.)

Pole beans! Garlic! Tomatoes! Kale!


Cut flower bed: Statice! Strawflowers (invisible)! Dahlias! Two rows of Bachelor's Buttons! (Rocks from out back.)

Thunder, Light, and Rocks

thunder and lightning, rain throughout today.

excavator roared all day out back, breaking ledge under the earth. we've begun collecting the rocks for garden edges and paths. beautiful patterns, shapes, weighty stories of the past they carry - of the formation of the earth, the history of this land here.

rainbow this evening after the storms. called husband outside with son and we looked together, even the boy gazing at it against the slate sky.

Fog

more rain, straight from sky to ground. green grass speckled with purple clover, frogs chirring and peeping, wren singing all the day. lightning bugs taking over at dusk, slowly appearing in the dark. fog slowly filling the night air now.

Dripping World

thundershowers, rain, a new baby born into our family this morning, world dripping with life.

Summer

first full day of summer.

family up for a visit, children gurgling and playing, all of us in happiness to be together.

torrential downpours off and on today, wondrously wet world. here is our little apple, soaking it in. discovered today that it's growing many apples, in this second year of its pruning.


little house wren has returned! last year's wren house turned into this year's swallow house, so it spent today courting the other bird house, singing in an arc around it, always facing its new little home. glad to have it back, dear little bird, our days to be filled with song now.

here it sits in a rare quiet moment.

Waxwings in the Strawberries!

no, these aren't in the strawberry patch, and yes, these are actually two photos of the same bird, but there is a flock of them and they do eat the strawberries. such a joy to see such beautiful birds sharing the red berries.

Birds

walked the trail again with the boys.

hawk cried above us, far away up in the sky.

mother duck and seven ducklings hugged the shore as they swam from us, the little ones swimming so tightly together that they made another duck.

Fox & Owl

perfect weather: warm, breezy, sunny with fluffy clouds.

we walked today, the boy, the dog, and me, our favorite trail these days, along the railroad track. as we looked at the wildflowers, we heard a crow call above us. so loud and ragged, i wondered whether a human was making the sound. but as i looked up, i spotted the crow's subject: a fox trotting alongside the tracks ahead of us by a few hundred yards. it stopped, turned to look at us, with the crow circling and calling above it, then continued on. stopped again, stood still watching us, then on again, all the while the crow calling its location to everyone in the forest. foxes are said to represent protection of family.

sewer pipes going in for the new house behind us. our little blueberry bushes and silky dogwood lifted gently out of the earth by the crane and set down in a cluster on the green grass. so gentle, like a mother bird shifting her eggs with her beak, the crane moved slowly and carefully.

boy, dog, and i spent the whole day outside. pulled up the bolted mustard greens, planted lettuce seedlings, mulched strawberries with pine needles, transplanted marigold seedlings into garden beds, re-seeded strawflowers, mulched garlic with straw. boy sat on his blanket in the garden, alternately chortling with glee at the world (crane operator said he wished he had a picture of him), and then planting his face into the earth in the spaces near him that i hadn't covered with blankets. took his spills well, fussing just loudly enough so i'd turn to see how he was doing, then happy to sit up again.

inside at dusk tonight, looked out the window at the sound of birds shouting. in the evening light, caught sight of three little songbirds chasing and harassing a large, strange-looking bird of prey, which flew directly over the center of our house. realized after it passed that it looked so peculiar because it had a flat face; it was an owl. spoke with my husband about it tonight, he reminded me that modern cherokee culture considers owls to be harbingers of death, but that traditional cherokee culture held them as harbingers of change, all kinds of change. what change will be coming to this house?

getting something from the car tonight, i noticed the moon, round and orange coming up over the trees in the far southeast. showed it to the boy, who looked at it for its light, and we stood and watched it float ever so slowly up, free of the trees, balancing itself in the night sky.

Finch Babies

missed a few days.

purple finch mother brought her three teenagers to the feeder yesterday. they spent almost the entire time shouting and shivering their wings at her, begging to be fed. in the ten minutes they were at the feeder, only one of them ventured over and scrambled onto the actual feeder to try for a seed, and then only once mother had flown off. i like this shot for the frantic energy; this one, along with its siblings, was in hot pursuit of their mother through the apple bough on our porch.



harvested three luscious heads of lettuce yesterday for a weston price potluck, along with some garlic scapes.

Away

away for the day...

Colors

swell day. sun, blue sky, warm, breezy.

watered all plants. no groundhog casualties for two days now. sprinkled coyote urine that we regretfully bought last year to see if it will help deter it.

peas are growing quickly now that they've found the fence. lettuce is generous these days. love to water the garden, see how everyone is doing each day. boy alternates between watching the water flow from the hose and hanging himself over in the sling, looking at the ground as i walk, always quiet.

found this eastern black swallowtail when i went to get the mail today, lying on the side of the road. reminds me of one i found on my first day working at a children's home in north carolina.

(i just today discovered how to put text below my pictures. this is very exciting.)
the males are always yellow, but the females can be yellow or black/brown, in which case they're referred to as "dark phase females." the one in NC was in its dark phase, and it was the beginning of my sharing my love of nature with the kids at the home. all but one of them didn't even feign interest, but one little guy could have played outdoors all day with me. we'd build little rock dams in the stream behind the home, he'd catch crayfish, salamanders. once he caught a baby salamander, and went in to show it off to the other kids, whom he was eternally trying to impress. one the of girls who normally couldn't be bothered with nature discovered, upon looking closely, that the creature's tiny, beating heart was visible through the translucent skin of its belly (it was up on the side of the transparent carrier).

also:
in his insatiable love of board games, my husband happened upon instructions for making a "Piecepack." this is the board game equivalent of a deck of cards, in that one can fashion a limitless number of games out of one set of pieces. it consists of 20 tiles, 24 discs, and four dice, all divided into four suits.

while it is possible to purchase sets, we both loved the idea of making our own; we play a lot of wonderful european board games (don't think 'monopoly' - it doesn't compare), and it was exciting to have something simple enough to be able to make our own. the link above gave him directions, and he promptly found a site to order wooden pieces from and set about designing suits for us. we chose the four elements: earth, air, fire, and water, and he combined ideas from the web with our own aesthetic. below is what he came up with. he printed the images onto adhesive transparent paper, cut them out, and affixed them to each piece. it's marvelous!

here he is working at a game. the games we've explored so far are as complex and challenging as the board games we regularly play. we're even working on creating a game of our own.





setting up for "fujisan," a fun solitaire game:

Evening Out

sunny day, warm with a cool wind.

finally planted cucumbers, and the nasturtiums who have been soaking for two days. lettuce, mustard, zucchini planted last saturday are all appearing; no beans yet. groundhog has taken out two more kale and another brussel.

spent much of this beautiful day indoors, art projects and organizing happening there. this evening as dinner cooked on the stove, brought my sleepy, diaper-less boy out to nurse on the back porch as the sun set. beams of light streaming low through the pines, moths glowing as they crossed it, spider webs appearing where the light lay across the grass. a mockingbird who first visited our boughs just last night sat in a neighbor's tree and serenaded the world, endless songs and twitters of every bird it had ever met. sleepy boy knew only warm arms and milk.

Babies

hot, humid again.

swallow baby flew the nest today! clumsy flapping in circles around our deck-limbs, and landed with wings slightly akilter each time. can you guess the baby?


around the same time, two young squirrels came for a visit. the white of their bellies was sharply contrasted with the brown of their bodies - a much more distinct line than in their parents. they had obviously been to our feeder - or someone's feeder - before, because they took to it quite adeptly.


one decided to sprawl out under our deck table after eating.



this one came for a meal a couple of weeks ago. in looking at it more closely again today, i realized that she'd been nursing.

Round Sun

hot & humid again, with a blessing of a breeze. so humid that the ball of the sun hung visible behind the curtain of thick clouds. in the afternoon and again in the evening, i mistook it momentarily for a full moon, so similar in size to the moon, who lets us look directly at her.

chickweed, hawkweed, birdsfoot trefoil, clover, gil-over-the-ground blooming.

a cool breeze quite suddenly graced the land this evening, and now pours in through our bedroom window upon us and our sleeping boy in his blanket.

Lightning Bugs

another hot one, towards ninety.

driving to a friend's, it looked and felt like any hot August day, only the flowers blooming were spring and early summer flowers, lilacs and lupine incongruous with the heat.

lightning bugs tonight. just three of four, speaking to us silently as we walked home in the dark through our yards, after sharing dinner with family. boy watching the dark world quietly, actively.

Wilting

heavy air again today. plants were wilted by noon, even with watering yesterday.

planted pole & bush beans to dry, and some bush green beans. considering installing an electrified fence to keep at bay the groundhog who's been nipping the leaves off our our kale, brussels, and onions.

indoors a lot today, windows and doors closed to hold in last night's cool air. through the window, leaves moving in the hot breeze, floppy and up-turned as it came; the picture of summer heat, against the blue sky.

Into the Earth

hot, humid, heavy day. worked outside all day today, my son up with his great-grandparents in the house behind ours, they in town from away.

planted another round of lettuce & mustard seeds; re-planted zucchini & summer squash seeds again (i'll remember to water this time!); planted butternut squash seeds. tomorrow will plant: bush beans, pole beans, cucumbers, more parsnips (a few didn't come up).

spent a while expanding my cut-flower beds with the "weedless gardening" technique we use & love: lay down 4 layers of newspaper, wet them with the hose, then lay down at least 2" of soil/compost on top, and plant into that. this technique preserves the waterways under the earth that support roots, keeps the microorganism communities intact below the surface of the soil (which also support the roots of the plants) and saves you from "waking up" all of the dormant seeds lying under the ground that otherwise start growing after you till. into this expanded bed (8'x10') i happily planted my flower seedlings: dahlias, statice, and strawflower. the bed only accomodated about 1/3 - 1/2 of the seedlings, so i'll need to find more space for them elsewhere, but at least these can start sending their roots down. still need to plant various sunflowers, and zinnias.

an update on the saga of our plum grove: we learned last week that american plums are not grafted onto rootstock, which means that the new little shoots from our dead plum are the same sort that we want to have grow, so today we lobbed off the dead stalk and are now watching the two little replacement shoots make their way into the world. being our main pollinator, it stands in the center of our little plum grove. so now our circle of 7' saplings, which looked scrawny a week ago, absolutely tower over the new little shoots growing in their midst. they have a way of leaning inwards over the little one, so that it looks like they're guarding and monitoring the growth of their new little relative.

Courting

heavy clouds all day, but no more rain yet.

plants have lept up out of the ground since yesterday: foxgloves are a foot high with multiple flower stalks, some of our garlic is waist-high, lettuce is ready to eat, bachelor's button rows are visible from a distance now.

male purple finch spent the afternoon frantically courting a lady who wanted nothing to do with him. tail up like a wren, crest as puffed up as he could manage, singing his heart out. a little bit pathetic, with the female so relaxed and dismissive.

Rain Rain Rain

glorious rain, all day long!

Primary Birds

bluebird returned today, coveting tree swallow's house. spent some time getting a feel for the neighborhood, sitting in the apple bough that our feeders hang from. when he finally flew over to get a closer peek at the birdhouse, the swallow promptly swooped down and ushered him away. before he left, we had male cardinal, male bluebird, and male goldfinch in the tree all at the same time - "primary birds," as my husband stated.

current owner:


prospective owner:


visitor: