a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

Category: Happiness

  • Tea for You and Your Cat


    Along the path out to the tofu house catmint blooms. Its leaves have such a delightful fragrance, I couldn’t resist making tea from them.


    The tea they made was so refined and soothing. It’s the type of tea a delicate princess who can feel a pea under twenty mattresses would drink. Between sips of catmint tea, I rested the cup on an armchair, and was amused when our cat, Rusty, jumped up and drank the tea, not gracefully like a delicate princess, he pushed his whole face into the cup and slurped it, he found it that delicious.


    I’ve never known Rusty to drink tea before. Catmint isn’t as intoxicating to cats as catnip, but it’s plenty stimulating to them. Now when I want to have tea with our cat, I know what to serve.

  • The Blue Sky Returns


    The sky is blue again. Sunday’s rain, which left the mimosa blossoms looking like sad, wet feathers, washed all the smoke out of the sky, and pushed it over the mountains. The birds can now see where they are flying. When I head down into the valley, I can see the San Juan islands once more, their forested peaks rising above a shimmering sea.



    The one alarming thing about the rain was seeing Satan sliding along the wet pavement. In all the years we’ve lived here, I’ve never seen a snail so big. This spring is the first year I’ve even seen a snail in the garden. It was a snail no bigger than a gnat, which I crushed as soon as I saw it. Rest assured, this beast is no longer in the land of the living either. All the more reason to hope that Claire hatches the five duck eggs she is incubating. Once the ducks are grown, I will give them the whole vegetable garden to roam, where they will devour all the slugs and any snails they find.


    It’s interesting how hens lay eggs with subtle differences from one day to the next. The chicks below are having a feast with the tofu I gave them. Tofu is high on their list of most desirable things to eat. Perhaps at the top of their list is watermelon. They will pick a watermelon until its rind is paper thin.

  • Mach Kuchen – From Garden to Oven


    I’ve never made Mach Kuchen from scratch this way, by first going into the garden and harvesting poppy seeds. Collecting poppy seeds is so much fun, I’m surprised it’s legal for adults to do it.


    Looking at the way poppy seed pods are shaped, somewhere there must an insect that has evolved to live in poppy seed pods. The pods are made of bug-sized chambers with little doors with roofs over the doors, keeping the chambers nice and dry. With the seed pods lifted high above the ground, they’d make great apartments for flying insects to buzz off from in the morning, and return to in the evening.



    Mach Kuchen is a simple dish. You start off with poppy seeds, grind them a bit, and make a jam out of them. The usual method is to use sugar, but this time I used honey instead.

    You roll out a soft yeast dough into a thin rectangle, spread the poppy seed jam over it, roll it up, let it rise, and bake until it is done. Covering the top with butter and poppy seed is an option.






    This may be the first Mach Kuchen made from poppy seed grown in the Skagit Valley. It’s certainly the first one made with poppy seed grown in this neck of the woods. Baking Mach Kuchen may bring good luck. This afternoon, the sky turned a shade of blue, the bluest it has been since the forest fire smoke blew in a week ago.

  • Sea of Poppy Heads


    The sky is a July blue this morning with mother of pearl clouds drifting by. A sea of poppy heads floats along the garden path. I shake them and listen. Can I hear the poppy seeds rattling inside? Not yet, but soon. It won’t be long before I’m spreading poppy seed jam on morning toast.



    It’s the season when perennials rule. There’s no effort required. No spring planting. No weeding. The perennials take over and bloom. The bees are happy. We are happy.



    The latest chicks are growing fast. It’s time to think of new names. What goes through the minds of chicks? It’s hard to fathom. Their senses are so different than ours. For one thing, as we go about our daily lives, we can’t see behind us. We hardly ever see our backs. Yet chicks, with their eyes on the sides of their heads, with their heads high above their bodies, always have a good view of their backs and what’s behind them. How different would our thinking be, if we had the peripheral vision of a chicken? We’d rarely be taken by surprise by something sneaking up behind us. Such vision would profoundly change all the mystery novels ever written. No lover would ever be able to sneak behind their loved one, cover their eyes, and say, “Guess who?” Cars wouldn’t need rear view mirrors because drivers could always see what’s behind them. There would probably be a whole category of accessories for our backs since we’d be aware of what they looked like. Hairstyles would be vastly different. “Do you want short bangs on the back of your head, or long bangs?” We wouldn’t have sayings like, “Forward and onward” because we’d be just as focused on backward as we would on forward.


  • Into the Woods


    I never thought I would have my own woods, let alone a bridge over a stream into the woods. Working in the woods is calming. I highly recommend it. I have some fence repair to do, but along the way, there is time to pause and look at the thimble berries. It won’t be long before the berries turn pink and then bright red before they disappear in my mouth. The best way to eat them is to bring your lips right up to them. When they are ripe, the thimbleberries will fall right into your mouth, no hands or fingers required.



    On the forest floor, a bed of soft moss has become the landing place of vine maple samaras and cottonwood fluff.



    The dogs love it when I have to go into the woods. With their ears and noses, they experience sensations that we humans can’t even fathom.