every day is a good day
After a snowless winter, falling cherry blossoms on the pond are the most snow the pond will see. It’s been a few years since the pond has frozen over, let alone be covered by a blanket of deep snow. Does the pond miss feeling the hard ice, the quiet a heavy snow brings? Are cherry blossoms enough to make the pond happy, or do they make it weep for a thick layer of ice topped with a blanket of snow?
Any day the mountain is out is a good day. When it is out, pedaling down into the valley to get the mail or deliver eggs, is smile time.
The salmon berries are fruiting. They should be called clown berries with their frilly collars.
It’s a riot of colors now with so many flowers in bloom. I found a riot in the compost pile. A bit of potato has taken root. I will need to carefully transplant it and see what kind of potato spontaneously came to being in the compost bin. Maybe I’ll call it potato composita.
The chickens are having a riotous good time by the pond. The water is high and it’s easy for them to get to the bank and scratch and dig to their heart’s delight in the mud. They probably are able to reach frog eggs, and waterbugs, and fancy pond fare. I’ve yet to see a chicken spear a fish, but someday I might.
Before you can eat an apple, it has to bloom. That delicious apple that goes crunch inside your mouth was once a beautiful flower, dancing in the spring air, and getting tickled by buzzing bees.
Apple blossoms have a delicate, sweet, slightly spicy fragrance.
This is what five million dandelions look like. I pass this meadow on the way home from the post office. It’s about four acres or 174,240 square feet. There are about 30 dandelion flowers per square foot. Multiply 174,240 by 30 and you get 5,227,500.
Hey! How’s this for an earthworm? The chickens would go crazy if they found it. It would be smorgasbord time. The overnight rain brought this large earthworm out of the ground. There are snakes smaller than this earthworm. You can see that it wouldn’t take too many of these earthworms burrowing through your soil to keep it light and fluffy. Have 25 to 75 of these per square foot, and they will do a bang-up job aerating the soil and keeping it very porous. The last thing you want to do is till the soil. One pass with a tiller through a vegetable bed, and you’ll kill thousands of earthworms.
The hens don’t know what they’re missing. Or maybe they’ve all gorged on giant earthworms already and are stuffed. They have been up for several hours. It’s gossip and preening time.
