a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

  • Surprises Every Day

    plum tree in bloom

    A surprise this morning when I went out to the cabin to make tofu was seeing the fruiting plum trees in full bloom. Last year the plums produced a bounty of sweet plums. Hopefully they will this year too.

    skunk cabbage in bloom
    old bird’s nest

    An old nest from last year remains in a young alder by the pond. Soon it will be hidden by new leaves. I’ve walked by this tree all winter and never noticed the nest. Or have I seen it before and forgot about it. Perhaps that is the joy of going senile. You can be surprised by the same thing over and over again. Will some bird use the nest again? It will be interesting to see.

    white chicken on the roam
    hens laying eggs

  • Cherry Blossom Blizzard


    Each year, the blooming cherry puts on a different show. Some years the tree is a cloud of white flowers. Other years the rains knock so many blossoms off, it looks bedraggled. This year it is blooming with a thick carpet of blossoms on the ground below it. A blustery day last week sent a blizzard of flowers falling to the ground. The deep snow underneath the tree is too beautiful to walk on.



    With today’s sunshine and tomorrow’s forecast for a sunny day, the tree should be at its peak tomorrow.

  • Trivial Events Lead to the Spectacular

    snow geese heading north

    A series of trivial events put me on Bow Hill Road at the spot at 4:12 p.m. this afternoon where a large flock of Snow Geese crossed overhead on their way north. First, I forgot to take some mail with me when I made deliveries this morning. So I had to bicycle down to the post office in the afternoon.

    I would have passed by the spot earlier and missed the Snow Geese, but the tires on my bicycle were low, so I had to pump air into them.

    snow geese heading north

    A few other forgettable events delayed me a minute here, a minute there. But not so much that I didn’t have the time to stop when I heard the Snow Geese approaching. The Bow Post Office closes at 4:30 p.m. However, I was within minutes of the post office, so I had the time to stop and enjoy the sight of the Snow Geese leaving. Was this their final flight out of the Skagit Valley? I don’t know. But in the direction they were flying, there’s no flat land to land until the other side of the Chuckanuts.

    snow geese heading north

    The peculiar thing about Snow Geese is the meandering threads they form in the sky when they fly. They don’t make the perfect V formations of Canada Geese. They fly in such numbers that their meandering lines can stretch for miles.

    And I would have missed the spectacle if I had remembered to take the mail with me this morning.

  • Frosty Cherry Blossoms


    Sunday’s blustery winds knocked cherry blossoms off the tree. Yesterday morning, frost dusted the blossoms. Frost is not the first thing that comes to mind when I picture cherry blossoms.

    A few more sunny days and the cherry blossoms will be in full bloom.

    I saw a bee flying about the cherry blossoms. Where is it spending these frigid nights?




    The first of the salmon berries are in bloom. So are plenty of skunk cabbage. They’d look lovely in a vase, in your house, though the stench would soon drive you out of your house.

  • All Shapes and Sizes


    The problem with buying graded eggs is that you’ll never run across an egg like this in the supermarket. The trick would be to breed a variety of chickens that consistently lays double yolk eggs like this.


    This morning, flocks of swans, flying north, flew overhead. I could hear them coming, honking out of sight, until the burst into view. During the winter months when they are in the valley, they usually fly about in small groups of two to five or seven. And they’re usually in a single line. But when they take to the skies for a long haul, that’s when they fly in V formation.

    I keep hoping they’ll fly by on their way north, to say one last, “Goodbye.” Today they did.


    Though if I were a swan and I saw that the cherry trees were about to bloom, I’d hang around a few days to enjoy them.