every day is a good day
This is my idea of fast food. Around here, going out into the garden and seeing what’s for dinner, is fast food. I can have supper on the table faster than it takes to go through the drive-through at many fast food joints, let alone drive there and back. Who knew fast food could be so good.
The last of the potatoes will be going into the ground this week. Few things look as drab as a pile of seed potatoes destined for the soil. As I cut the seed potatoes, I close my eye and envision rows of blooming potato plants. The purple potatoes have purple flowers, the rose potatoes have pink flowers, and the yellow potatoes have white flowers. The first time I saw a potato plant bloom, I was so surprised. I had no idea they bloomed or were so beautiful. Based on how many potatoes I am planting, I may harvest a ton of potatoes by the end of the season.
What aren’t drab are the silicone baking cups I got today. In mid summer, I may even use these for baking some potato dish.
It’s amazing how much power invisible things have. I started a new compost bin yesterday. Using a 16 foot long by 4 foot wide piece of cattle fencing, I rolled it into a ring 4.5 feet across. I had to wrap it in fine hardware cloth to keep the chickens out. I added one wheelbarrow of poultry bedding, and by the time I returned with a second wheelbarrow, the compost bit was full of chickens. Chickens are great at turning and tearing apart compost piles. They aren’t welcome when you are starting a compost pile. Once I had the compost bin chicken-safe, I filled it with:
The center of the compost was 60ºF when I put it all together yesterday afternoon. This morning it was 80ºF. I can’t see them, but trillions of microscopic creatures are having a feast, gorging themselves and generating excess heat from dancing through the night. May they party, eat, drink, and dance for a long time.
Along with fresh greens and eggs, there is the first peony of the year. Peonies in April, way up here! When have peonies ever bloomed in April this far north? Ten, twenty years from now, will they be blooming in March or even February?
Seven years ago on April 20, 2008, a late spring snow planted snowcaps on our tulips. The winter of 2008-2009 was brutal, with snow falling every day from December into March. Even our well froze and we survived by melting snow for several weeks. Such winters seems impossible any more. If the climate has changed this drastically in such a short time, what will it look like in another decade or two?
This is Kuma-Hime 熊姫 or Bear Princess. I call her that because she reminds me of a bear. A hen with the face of a bear and she lays a green egg. Reality is more whimsical than fairy tales.
“Once upon a time, there lived a hen with the face of a bear. One spring, just as the apple blossoms were opening, and purple-green spikes of hostas were shooting out of the ground, the bear-faced hen laid an egg as green as fine turquoise.” Sounds like the start of fantastical fairy tale. And yet, it’s what happened here today. It’s like I’m living in a fairy tale. We all are, if we look close enough at what is happening around us.
