The first tulip is starting to open. This is a season for colors. Everyday there is something new in bloom. It makes waking up each morning an adventure.

A sweater makes a good makeshift egg basket. So do pockets in jackets if there are just a few. Jut don’t forget you put them in your pockets. The egg on the far right is Hazel’s. The egg on the lower left is Bendy’s. I gathered these at the end of the day, when I went to let our old rooster, Billy, into his evening roost. He likes to be let in the back way so the younger roosters won’t harass him. He’s so happy when he doesn’t have to sneak past Sven and King Richard. He chuckles with joy when we let him in. That’s the closest way I can describe it. Roosters have a distinctive happy call they make when they are overcome with joy. If they are really joyous, they will even do a little dance with their feet. Does happiness in chickens feel the same as happiness in humans? Why wouldn’t it? Happiness is such a fundamental emotion that it’s origin probably predates humans and chickens by hundreds of millions of years.

Carrying the eggs into the house, I pass the cherries in bloom. Few things are as soft as cherry blossoms in the evening. The wonderful things about flowers is that they look so different at different times of the day.

The cherry blossoms are in full bloom now, three weeks earlier than last year. Last year it was March 27 when they opened up. They smell like baby powder. It’s been a very warm winter and spring. I looked back through my photos and found dates when the cherries bloomed before. They show what an unusual spring this is:

2015 – March 7
2014 – March 27
2013 – March 30
2010 – March 18
2008 – April 7 (it snowed March 30)
2007 – March 29
2006 – March 25

In the hoop house, the lettuce I planted last week is starting to pop out of the ground.