final push

I'm used to having the hens run like crazy toward me when I alight, from the car, or from the farmhouse, or anywhere at all. I shout "cheepers!" and they zoom, as if propelled by a vision of gold. Corn gold. (That's what they get from me, insofar as I am in the mood to give them treats.)





Even Oreo does an interesting pogo stick-like bounce to get to me as quickly as possible, given his disability.

But I was surprised early this evening to see another "cheeper" follow me up and down the big flower bed (the bed that spans the space from the farmhouse to the sheep shed) as I did my usual bend and pluck weeds routine. A little guy.






Maybe he took flight from a nest and then realized that he couldn't quite manage the return trip up. If so, his life could be measured in minutes. Isis is not a cat that chases birds, but there are surely plenty of predators who would love this morsel for a predinner hors d'oeuvre.

I watched him as he hopped around me. I threw him some grain seeds that I had in my pocket, but that only frightened him. Eventually, I left him there, hoping he'd try harder to fly upwards toward safety.

It is evening. I really cannot believe how quickly this day moved from sunrise (or thereabouts)...






...to sunset. Maybe it was the work on the raspberry fields. Remember how I estimated we had seven days left of repair work? Well, we pushed ourselves today. It wasn't a brilliant day, it wasn't even sunny, but we were both quite tired of working that piece of land, so we put every last ounce of effort into it and by late afternoon, all the fabric was removed from beneath loads of soil and growth, the box elder tree saplings dug up and discarded, weeds sifted out and trashed into the big compost pile. There still is a strip that needs a huge weeding effort and we do need more wood chips to cover any bare soil, but you will not hear again any recounting of raspberry repair work. It is (mostly) done!






There could be nothing else that I could do today. I mean, I'd been up, as always, since just after sunrise and breakfast belonged to those early hours...






...and then, of course, came the heavy work on the patch.

Ah, but there is one thing that I can still accomplish: a drive to the Flower Factory!


 


... to pick up, well, maybe a heuchera. And the "wedding" phlox "Miss Lingard." Maybe two of those. And sure, something else will get thrown in, so it's never the most economical trip that I make, but it is most certainly one of the most peaceful ones, especially on an evening, when the skies are gray, the winds are cool and the vast terrain is empty. Just me and a red wagon, moving from one greenhouse to the next, reading tags, taking in the aroma of wet dirt, of growing things.