The new year starts with a mystery. One of the hens is laying a rose colored egg, but which one? This is when it would come in handy to be able to talk with them and ask, “Which one of you is doing this?”
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A Mystery Rose
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An Auspicious Start
What a morning to start a new year. New Year’s morning broke calm and mild, so mild I spent time outdoors on the deck enjoying the rising sun. Not only was it mild, English Daisies and Forsythia were in bloom.
2020 is the year of the rat, the first of the animals in the 12 cycle of zodiac animals. The rat beat all the other animals in the race to decide the order of the zodiac. Cleverly, he hitched a ride on the ox and just before the ox was about to step over the finish line, the rat jumped off in front of the ox and became the winner of the race.
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December Blue and Green
Quite a spectacular morning for late December. It’s like a brilliant spring day.
The hard frosts in October and November didn’t kill off the arugula and having a bed of fresh arugula in winter is a treat. Other hardy greens like Komatsuna 小松菜 are doing well too. A feast for this time of year.
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Frosty
Thursday morning was frosty for a change. The Flickers, Jays, and other birds have yet to finish eating all the apples. This morning Spotted Towhees are making a breakfast of this apple.
For December, mornings have been mild. In some years, in the shade the frost doesn’t melt from day to day and accumulates to look like snow. Not this year.
Gobo ゴボ (burdock) is worth growing for it’s spiky seed pods. They become sparkling jewels on a frosty morning.
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Too Wet for the Ducks
A fitting morning for the dawn after the Solstice. It does feel like the dawn of a new year and the awakening of spring. The days are no longer getting shorter. This is a day worth celebrating. The new light will breathe life back into the woods.
Saturday morning the garden ducks were nowhere to be seen. Their swimming tank where they spend most of the day was quiet. I found them in the hoop house. It poured rain Friday night and it must have been too wet even for the ducks. I’m guessing that is why they went into the hoop house. It is raining too much when it is too wet for ducks.
This morning, they are back out in the garden, preening themselves after a good swim.