a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

Month: May 2016

  • Busy as a Bee

    BusyAsABee

    What could possibly be as busy as a bee? Two dogs helping me weed a bed to plant potatoes, that’s who.

    DogsDigging

    Takuma 拓真 and Ena 枝那 spent hours yesterday, and much of the morning today helping me prep a potato bed. What are they looking for? Gophers? Moles? I’m not sure. I did hear an occasional crunch when they found something worth eating. They don’t show any interest in the countless earthworms, but they are finding something to eat down there. Whatever it is, they aren’t sharing it with me.

    SvendaIntheBrush

    Svenda has better things to do than help me plant potatoes. She’s looking for that special herb, that striking bug, to give her eggs a flavor all their own. With late spring’s verdant foliage, there is no shortage of good things to eat.

    YellowIris

  • Baby Potatoes and Peonies on Mother’s Day

    PotatoBabies

    It’s the beginning of May and there are baby potatoes in the garden. Dust them off, pop them in your mouth, and they are like little crunchy sugar bombs going off in your mouth.

    DogsInTheForest

    Takuma and Ena aren’t interested in baby potatoes. Rabbits are more their thing. They already ate three today. Maybe not the thing to say on Mother’s Day, but the vegetables are happy the dogs are here. If they could talk, the peas and carrots would scream to the dogs where the rabbits are hiding.

    PeonyWhite

    Peonies scream Mother’s Day like no other flower.

  • Dig, Dig, Dig

    DiggerA

    They are diggers. We found that out yesterday and today. Moles and gophers be forewarned, Takuma and Ena are here.

    DiggerB
    DiggerC

    In the woods and in the garden, Takuma and Ena dug deep, trying to find whatever it is that they are smelling. All that digging is so tiring.

    DiggerD

  • A Cat and Its Cow

    ACatAndItsCow

    This is what you don’t see in your large box store. This is one of the cats at Belfast Feed Store, a local feed store a few miles from us where we get many farm supplies, milk, cream, and honey. He is often on the counter, eager to greet you and let you pet him. This is one reason I avoid the box stores. I’d rather chat with the person who owns the store and say hello to their pets. You can’t do that in stores with tens of thousands of employees.

    [wpvideo dGO1on9u]

  • 枝那-Ena and 拓真-Takuma

    Dogwood

    The dogwood buds look like they are ready to take flight, or burst out in a chorus. May should be called Dogwood. It should be forbidden to build a house or apartment where the residents can’t see a dogwood. If everyone had a dogwood they saw every day, the world would be a much happier place.

    MotherHenAndChicks

    The chicks are ready to explore. Tomorrow I’ll open the door and let their mother take them on their way. She is dying to show them their first worm. Little chicks can eat worms longer than they are tall. It would be like us trying to swallow a six foot long hot dog.

    EnaAndTakuma1

    Their names are 枝那-Ena and 拓真-Takuma. Ena is the white female and Takuma the black male. They are exploring the greener areas of their expanded kennel. They have a fifty foot section which wraps around the west end of the house.

    EnaAndTakuma2
    Takuma

    Takuma is taking in his new surroundings. He can hear the chickens rustling in the brush. Hopefully it won’t be too long before he and Ena can go chase rabbits through the woods. We’ll see if these two can outsmart the rabbits. A trick I saw many rabbits do with our previous dogs, is to run around in a tight circle in the thick brush and get our dogs spinning around the circle, following the scent. And when the dogs were sure they had it, the rabbits would make a bee line in another direction. The rabbit would be long gone by the time the dogs realized they weren’t on its tail.