a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

Author: theMan

  • What the Spring Sun Brings


    The spring sun shines a light on garden art, a shallot carved into an exquisite piece. Nature has a way of turning anything into a museum piece if you leave it alone long enough.


    The spring sun brings a bumble bee to life. Fresh out of the cold ground, it rests on the back porch, soaking in the sun, before she flies off to start her colony. Hopefully, she found a nest site on this sunny day and is snug tonight in her new home, dreaming of all the children she will have.


    The spring sun brings a cat on my chest when I stretch out to enjoy the warm, sunny day. The spring sun, source of life and happiness.

  • Winter is But a Memory


    Winter is but a memory now with tulips pushing their flower buds high, cherries in bloom, indian plums dangling their slender white flowers, plums spreading their pink petals wide for the bees, bleeding hearts carpeting the forest floor with green lace, and ferns waking up, their heads bending slowly upwards.

    The bleeding hearts which cover much of the forest floor here are the pink flowered Lamprocapnos spectabilis, a flower native to Siberia, northern China, Korea, and Japan. It is the only species in the genus Lamprocapnos. It is so well spread here that you’d think it had always been here.

    The Indian Plum, Oemleria cerasiformis is a native plant here, growing from Santa Barbara in California, up the Pacific coast of America into British Columbia. It too is a sole species in its genus, Oemleria. Fifty-seven genera of plants have 500 or more species, with Astragalus (milk-vetches) having 3,270 species.







  • It’s Not Only Flowers That Bloom


    The cherry blossoms are opening, and as they open they sing for the bumblebees to come. I saw my first bumblebee of the season today. By the weekend the cherry blossoms should be buzzing with bumblebees.


    The cherry tree is not the only thing in bloom, Russel, the rooster is always in bloom. His comb with three ridges is a blazing red peony. I wonder if any of the chicks he sires will have peony combs. Maybe I’ll have a flock of peony headed chickens.

  • Just One Warm Day


    Just one warm day is all the cherry blossoms are asking to spread their petals. It is spring. The sun has moved into the northern hemisphere. Is one warm day too much to ask for? But maybe we have it all wrong with temperature charts over days and weeks to predict when the cherries will bloom. Maybe what we need is to put microphones among the cherry blossom buds and listen for the buzz of the bumblebees. Could it be that cherry blossoms don’t open until they hear at least three bumblebees buzzing about? After all, what’s the point of spreading your petals if the bumblebees aren’t there to tickle them?



    It’s warm enough for the rhubarb, forsythia, and daffodils. Maybe the bumblebees wait to dig themselves out of their burrows until there is a sniff of daffodil in the air. Maybe the micro-tremors rhubarb stalks spread through the ground as they push their way out trigger the daffodils to bloom, the scent wafting off the daffodil blossoms trigger the bumblebees to stir, the bumblebees buzzing through the cherry blossom buds trigger them to open, the cherry blossoms trigger all sorts of happiness. Just saying. The world is more Alice in Wonderland than we imagine. We’re just not paying attention.




    In the cool woods, the first trillium of the season is about to unfurl. We spotted it while showing a longtime dear friend through the woods this morning. Most of the trilliums were just points of green sticking out of the forest floor. Not this one. This morning, the bud was still tightly curled. This afternoon it has already started to unfurl.

  • Of Skunk Cabbage and Coffee Beans


    When we left Seattle twelve years ago, we thought we would be deprived of some creature comforts living so far from the city. Pleasantly, that has not turned out to be the case. If anything, it seems that it is the city folk who have to go without. How many people in the city have a nearby coffee roaster they can call up in the morning to have a coffee beans roasted to their specification? And I doubt there are any in the city who get to enjoy a pleasant bicycle ride, passing watery ditches full of blooming skunk cabbage, to pick up coffee beans roasted just for them.

    This summer I gave Gilda a sample of the coffee beans we like, and asked her if she could tell what kind of beans they were, and if she could come up with a similar roast. It didn’t take her long to match the roast, and now, whenever we need more coffee beans, I just call her in the morning, and pick up the beans in the afternoon.


    It’s a pleasant bike ride to her roasting cabin, and today, the ditches on the sides of the roads were bursting with blooming skunk cabbage, Lysichiton americanus. They are a sure sign that you are living in the north. The first time I saw skunk cabbage in bloom was as a fourteen year old, traveling on my own in Hokkaido in early summer. There, the skunk cabbage, Lysichiton camtschatcensis, have white blossoms.

    And I doubt city folk have a coffee roaster who has the time to chat about gardening when they pick up their coffee beans. Without a line of impatient customers behind me, I get a guided tour of Gilda’s garden to see what is blooming and advice on how to keep chipmunks from digging up tomato plants, instead of a busy clerk handing me coffee beans and yelling, “Next!”