a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

Author: theMan

  • Mouth Wide Open

    MouthWideOpenA

    All looks calm and peaceful with the peonies’ mouths wide open. But along the edge of the pond the struggle for life and death plays out. A garden snake has caught a fish.

    MouthWideOpenB
    MouthWideOpenC

    It’s an effort for the snake to swallow the fish. It takes a long time, swallowing a scale’s width and waiting until its jaw can stretch a bit more to get the next bit of the fish down its throat. How did it nab it? It must have been waiting at the water’s edge, hiding among the cattails to snatch the fish when it swam by.

    Away from the pond, it’s calm and peaceful. The peonies are in full bloom and the chickens are enjoying the late afternoon sun.

    MouthWideOpenD

  • Spread My Wings And …

    SpreadWingsA

    I don’t have wings like a chicken, but even I can see how good it must feel to spread your wings in the bright, warm sun. Sunbathing is a favorite pastime of chickens. They twist themselves into humorous contortions as they soak up the heat of the sun. Chickens need their time in the sun as much as they need nests, water, food, and roosts.

    SpreadWingsB
    SpreadWingsC

  • Sounds of Spring

    SpringDitchA

    A fortuitous combination of country road crews and rain has created a slender garden of cascading mountain streams along Bow Hill Road. Take a few steps away from busy Bow Hill Road and you enter the calming world of a mountain stream, cascading over the rocks.

    [wpvideo XMgE42YH]

    It’s a world almost no one sees though thousands go by every day. While I was filming the cascading waters, cars drove by every five to ten seconds. At a car every ten seconds, that’s 360 cars a day. In ten hours that’s some 3,600 cars and how many thousands of people? Do any realize how beautiful it is in the ditch?

    In the future, when cars drive themselves, you’ll have time to enjoy the beauty in the ditches. You’ll be able to get out of your car, and send it on it’s way to pick up your shopping and do your errands, while you dip your toes in the cold cascading waters of the ditch. Your car will come back in an hour with your shopping, and take you home, refreshed from listening to the sounds of spring.

    Every cascade makes it’s own sound. The size and shape of the rocks, the width of the stream, the slope of the rock, the flow of the water, all make the water sing a different pitch and volume. The water sings its way down to the valley. When the road engineers and crew were designing and building the ditch, I don’t think they were planning on making a water instrument miles long, but that’s what they accomplished. Often the most wondrous things people make are things they never intended to create.

  • A Few of the Wonders Today

    Magentaspreen sprouts

    The news on the radio, internet, and TV, is so dismal, it’s a wonder the world doesn’t stop spinning and just give up. And yet, every minute of every day, there are wonders to enjoy. The magenta screen have sprouted in the garden. Grow this plant once, let it go to seed, and you’ll never have to plant it again. It’s remarkable when you think about it. In late summer, the magenta spreen drops its tiny seeds, very tiny seeds, onto the ground. These tiny specs survive all winter just below the surface of the soil, and sprout in the spring without you having to do a thing. How do they make it all winter without being eaten or destroyed?

    Radishes

    What is more wondrous than picking radishes out of the ground? Or watching a peony flower bud swell?

    PeonyBuds
    LunchBasket

    For lunch, a basket of kale buds, you don’t find these in stores, Pepper’s egg, and radishes. The world won’t stop spinning today. Too many good things are happening.

  • How Do Your Vegetables Bloom?

    Blooming rubystreaks

    I will never need to buy rubystreak seeds again. A row of rubystreaks I let grow through the winter are in full bloom. One row will produce enough seeds to last a lifetime.

    An eyeopener of growing vegetables is seeing what they turn into when you don’t eat them. Salad greens like rubystreaks, arugula, and lettuce grow taller than my shoulder, sending up flower stalks that soar above my head. The first time I let lettuce go to flower, I was impressed with what magnificent plants they became. The radishes I let go to seed have flowerstalks shoulder high. The kale plants are up to my chest. It’s as fun watching these vegetables grow as it is to toss them in a salad.