bright and beautiful

A painfully beautiful day! You could not improve upon it, even as you understand that it is so very rare tp have this confluence of goodness and so you must make great use of it. You have a morning, a noon hour and an evening and then, like a vacation, it will be a thing of the past, leaving you with memories, nothing more.

It is a good thing that I am still waiting to get printouts of exams because it would be very difficult to stay indoors on this superb day.

Morning.  I do as it seems I do every day now. I check for mice (nothing!) and I walk the land.





I note things that need attention and I mull over whether it is better to concentrate on getting a small portion of the land very very right, or a large portion right in small incremental ways. Mostly I do the former: work hard on small areas. But these don't need my attention right now. And so my working sights branch out.





Funny I should mention branches, because much of the work today consists of cutting away dead branches – large and small.

There are the healthy trees with spent branches and then there are the trees that appear quite spent themselves. We have, in fact, a whole dead tree that, according to me, should have come down some years ago, except even this is difficult for Ed (we’re taking away the perfect woodpecker home!). And there are a number of box elders that really should come down as well, but you could spend a whole summer on that project and still be left with a lot of pruning at the end of it all. So we leave alone the big issues and concentrate on the manageable ones.

Did I mention how beautiful this day is? What with the blue sky and the fruit trees nearing their blossoming peak? Breakfast is on the porch. How could it be otherwise! Isis joins us.





In the afternoon we move some ant hills away from the house (that’s a cross your fingers kind of project) and then we bike to our most favorite café. It’s a twenty minute ride and I think how this is the amount of time it took me to bike from the condo to work.

And I am not done with the outdoors yet! In the early evening, I mow down clumps of weeds around the fruit trees and the willow.

I’m spent. How the bees keep on going, hour after hour is beyond me. Hats off to you guys.





In a rare move, Ed and I take the motorcycle to town for dinner. Such a night! Chock full of good warm air. No freeze warning either. Perfect, from morning 'til tomorrow morning.