a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

  • Cool to Hot


    A cool, foggy morning belies what is about to come. In the 16 years we have lived here, it has never been 90ºF, 32ºC. But Sunday and Monday, the forecast is for temperatures high above that. It is just for two days, but a harbinger of hotter summers that will transform the cool, gentle climate we love.



    The ducks are blissfully unaware of the upcoming heat wave. They do have plenty of water to paddle about on a hot day.



    I discovered Snow’s nest this morning. It’s positioned precariously at the drop off into the pond. It wouldn’t take much for an egg or two to roll out of the nest and into the pond. I stole a few eggs for breakfast. Until she decides it is time to roost, I’ll sneak a few off from time to time. I don’t mind her hatching a few ducklings, but not twenty or so.


  • Do It Differently


    We don’t have just a handful of flower types. We have an endless variety of flower types. The grass flower above is other worldly. Researches estimate the origin of grasses to roughly 77 million years ago. So how many million years ago did this marvelous flower take shape? No doubt this splendid flower has been blooming long before we humans appeared.


    It is the height of garlic scape season. Maybe the best time of the year. Though, really, what time of the year isn’t great?


    A surprise in the garden was finding a glob of regurgitated salmon berry. The nearest salmon berry is so far away, the only way this little blob of salmon berry could have landed in this spot in the garden is if a micro meteorite hit a salmon berry at just the right angle to send a bit of berry flying over the fence and into the garden. Could happen. 37,000-78,000 tons of meteorite mass fall onto the earth every year. It’s not impossible for a tiny grain of this 78,000 tons of matter to strike a salmon berry nearby and send it airborne.

    Though most likely a bird regurgitated it. Perhaps a robin hopped into the garden after nibbling a salmon berry and spit out the blob to make room for a fat worm it saw.



    This season of endless flowers is a gentle reminder that there are a million ways to bloom.




  • Twilight


    Twilight’s soft light embues a peony with grace. The pond is quiet save for the last songs the birds sing. It is the season of birdsong and bee buzz. Early mornings there are so many birds singing I wonder how they find each other. The warm afternoons buzz with so many bees, I’m surprised I don’t see them colliding midair.




    Fading light highlights the truth that the distinctions we make between this and that are just illusions, tricks our minds play on us. There is no this and that, us and them. Matter flows continuously. There are no boundaries. Everything is one.



    The soft hues of thimbleberry flowers are even softer at twilight. And the fragrance of wisteria blossoms effuses the soft evening air. How many millions of light years would a soul need to travel through the universe to find another planet where the evening air is as fragrant as the evening air I get to enjoy just a few steps from my front door?

    “The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.” G. K. Chesterton

  • Bees Buzz

    bee on flower

    May’s warmth has brought out the bees. The garden is buzzing with them. I discovered a colony of digger bees while weeding a bed of Iris. Their colonies are underground. One of them reminded me, not so gently, that this was their territory.

    ruby streaks

    Ruby streaks are my kind of vegetable. Let them go to seed and next year they will form a thick bed of salad greens. The way they grow makes me wonder if sowing seeds thickly in the fall might be the better way to plant a vegetable garden.

    chickens on the path
    damselfly

    Damselflies are darting about again. The only continent without damselflies is Antarctica. They have been around for 250 million years. May they carry on for another 250 million years.

    Japanese iris
    lily flower buds
    potato buds

    Some of the potatoes are already sending out flower buds. This looks like it will be a good year for potatoes. I may have planted more than we can possibly eat, but why not?

    veronica

  • May, Month of Big Skies


    May is big sky month. The clouds are more summer like. The sky cobalt blue. The vivid green of new growth sets off the every changing sky scenery.



    Salmonberries wave in May’s gentle breezes. Another month from now their tart red berries will make my face wrinkle when I eat them.


    Nature reminds me constantly that everything is eaten by something. In my hunt for where the ducks on the pond are laying their eggs, yesterday I uncovered new nests with a few eggs. And in thick growth I found a mother lode. Twelve eggs in a single nest, only all the eggs had been eaten. My worry about waking up one morning and finding several hundred ducklings in the pond evaporated. Some lucky creature is much better than I am at finding the ducks’ hidden nests.



    Last night, on my last venture outside to check on the chickens before going to bed, I looked up and saw the path of a jet on its way west across the Pacific. From here, the Far East is really the Far West. Though if you think about it, no matter where you are, every place else is west of you, just as it is east of you. Or are you supposed to imagine that everything is west of you until you get to the point halfway around the world, and everything west of that is east of you? Something to ponder when I go hunting for more duck nests around the pond.