a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

Category: Reflections

  • 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.

  • 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.


  • A Sad Day


    The first of the poppies opened this summer solstice day. I find the summer solstice tinged with sadness. It’s all down hill from here. It’s barely gotten warm, and already the days will start getting shorter. They should keep getting longer until the end of July, and wait to shorten until September.



    The skies are rarely so blue as they are in the Pacific Northwest. The cottonwoods on the other side of the pond wave good bye to the setting sun. Are they sad to see the days getting shorter?


    With the days getting shorter, it’s a race for the apples to get fat by fall. I don’t know what kind of apple this tree is, but by mid August it’s apples are sweet, crisp, and juicy, a consolation for shortening days.

  • Bumblebees Love Blue


    The ceanothus is in full bloom and is swarming with all kinds of bees, including bumblebees. There is so much pollen to collect, the bumblebee legs fly wedging pollen into their hairy legs, and cleaning their big eyes. As hard as bumblebees work, they must look forward to a good night’s sleep in their cozy nests.

  • UPS Driver and the Tiger


    If I hadn’t ordered soybeans on May 26, the UPS driver would not have shown up today, and if the UPS driver had not shown up with the soybeans, I would not have made the trip to the cabin at the precise moment that a Western Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio rutulus) was visiting the blooming mint along the trail to the cabin.

    So many unimaginably wonderful things happen as a result of the very ordinary. I never thought when I ordered soybeans it would result in having an enchanting encounter with a Western Tiger Swallowtail. It makes me wonder what the Swallowtail did to have the encounter with me.