a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

  • A Hen With a Bear’s Face

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    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.

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    “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.

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  • It’s the Unexpected That Make Life

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    We all have plans for the day, a schedule of things to accomplish, people to call, emails to send, calendar items to do. But it’s the unexpected things that make life. This morning there was Lucky, waiting for me to drop something in the compost bin. Dew drops on the peony leaves. The flutter of cherry blossoms in the morning breeze. Stumbling on a queue of hens waiting to use a nest. Looking up at midday and seeing a hint of summer in the sky. Running into Buttercup in the evening as she led her chicks to the chicken yard for the night. And finding an egg with a nipple. Now, that was very unexpected. It’s the unexpected things that make life.

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  • What Water Becomes

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    Cattails, ferns, comfrey, there are so many wonderful plants shooting out of the ground. If it weren’t for the frequent spring rains, none of them would flourish.

    I’ve recently learned about Dr. Elaine Ingham, a fascinating microbiologist. A quote of hers I like is: “If we as human beings are to continue to live on this planet we have to stop destroying her.” In this video, The Roots of your Profits, she describes the importance of root biology for growing healthy plants.

    Most of the sugars plants create from absorbing sunlight through their leaves, they send down into their roots and into the soil to feed colonies of bacteria. The bacteria attract a variety of predators, and in the process of consuming the bacteria, they leave behind nutrients right at the plants roots, which the plants slurp up. It’s an ingenious method, but is easily destroyed when fungicides, herbicides, and pesticides are used. The video is an hour and a half long, but fascinating.

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  • Perfume from the Garden

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    Cooking, grinding coffee, washing dishes, all of these things are better with fresh lilac in the kitchen window. It won’t be long before the fragrance of peonies fills the kitchen too. The peony buds are full and on the verge of bursting open.

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  • Wild Cherry Blossoms

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    Wild cherry trees in bloom comfort my eyes each time I pedal home from an errand. There are wild cherries all through the woods. Somewhere in the mountains is a grove of cherry trees many hundreds of years old. A grove so beautiful when in bloom, that no one who has seen it as ever left the grove. As a result, to this day, no one knows where it is. If you stumble upon it one spring while hiking in the remote Cascades, you will never return either.

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