a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

  • Beauty Surrounds Us

    Beauty surrounds us throughout the day. Today I found a robin’s egg in a nest, was handed a bouquet of peonies from the kind driver delivering planting soil, enjoyed watching a hen with her chicks as she rested with her chicks after exploring outdoors all morning, and took in the colors of plants in bloom. And these were just a few of the many beautiful things I saw today. Even now as I edit this page, I have a lovely cat resting on my arm.

    Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy ~ Anne Frank
    Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it. ~ Confucious
    Beauty is not caused. It is. ~ Emily Dickinson
    Everything changes, but beauty remains. ~ Kelly Clarkson
    Many eyes go through the meadow, but few see the flowers in it ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

    RobinsEgg
    PeonyBouquet
    HenWithChicksOutExploring
    HenWithChicksResting
    FloweringBush
    RedFloweringBush
    WysteriaInFullBloom

  • Mother for a Month

    MotherWithChicks140429

    A month ago she was looking out for eight tiny chicks. Now the eight chicks are a month old and getting more independent by the day. By now, they are too big to all fit under her when they sleep at night, but they still snuggle around her when they go to bed at night. She takes them out to forage before the sun is up, though I’m not sure if it’s her idea to get them up so early, or if it’s the chicks who wake her up.

    MotherWithChicks140529A
    MotherWithChicks140529B

  • What a Happy Chicken Looks Like

    Hmm, so what does a happy chicken look like? What does a happy chicken do?

    LuckyInPasture140528

    One thing chickens love doing is being outdoors. They love to meander through thick brush. And they’re not afraid to do it on their own. Chickens are communal birds in that they like to roost together, share a dirt bath, and gossip. At the same time, they need time to themselves. Watching these chickens behave, it makes me wonder how frustrated chickens must be which live in crowded conditions.

    ChickALongWayOff

    Even when they are still very small, chicks will venture a long ways from their mothers and siblings. At times it can be a lot of work for the mother hen to keep track of her brood. This freedom is what chickens crave. They need all this room to roam in order to lay exquisite eggs like these.

    EggsFromHappyChickens

  • The Beauty of Food Growing

    RubyStreaks140527A

    Whether it be sprouting mustard greens, developing cherries, or stately garlic stalks, food that is beautiful. When you are lucky enough to see the whole process, from tiny seed or bulb to fully developed plant, cut and on your cutting board, the flavor of the plant is enhanced.

    As you eat it, you see all the many forms it took and the weeks or months or even years it took before it was ready to be eaten. You miss all that when everything you eat is purchased at a store. Even growing a few things, if you can, is worth the effort. Even if you fail, you’ll learn to appreciate that it’s not always an easy process producing fresh food.

    And if you’re lucky, you’ll get to see the many beautiful forms your produce goes through as it grows.

    Cherries140527A
    GarlicStalks140527A

  • Bees Feed Us

    ArugulaBlossoms140527
    BumbleBeeOnArugulaFlowerA patch of arugula is in full bloom. The wild bees are buzzing all afternoon, finding plenty of food to gather as they buzz from flower to flower. Luckily for me, this means I will have plenty of arugula seeds to keep planting through the summer. The great thing about many vegetables is that you don’t have to keep buying seed. Let some of the plants flower and go to seed and you have a supply of vegetable seeds in perpetuity.

    That’s assuming that the wild bees will keep coming. There’s no guarantee that they will. They can’t reproduce and survive if their habitat, our gardens and our fields, are continually doused with poisons. When I visit garden and hardware stores and see aisles of poisons and herbicides, I wonder how much longer our fragile environment will last. It’s a sobering to think that one of these springs, the buzzing of bees may be gone.

    Honeybees abandoning hives and dying due to insecticide use, research finds
    Beyond Honeybees: Now Wild Bees and Butterflies May Be in Trouble
    Decline of bees forces China’s apple farmers to pollinate by hand
    Declining Bee Populations Pose
    A Threat to Global Agriculture
    Bee Sustainable