hazelnuts

All trees are not created equal. If a child draws a leafy tree, inevitably there will be a trunk, with a green canopy of leaves above. Most deciduous trees follow that pattern. But then, along comes the hazelnut. If you prune it (and you should), it will do you the favor of growing more like a very full, very tall bush, making nut laden branches reachable to even small people. And here's another thing: hazelnut trees actually tolerate shade. They'll produce nuts (sometimes called hazelnuts, sometimes filberts) even if you plant them in the broad shade of another tree. This makes them very desirable for farmette planting, because Ed did not cut back all the invasive trees that should have been cut back for our forest project and so we do have large swatches of shade.

Why all this filbert info? Well, it seems that today was destined to be a hazelnut day for us. We have eight of them to plant and we start in on it even before breakfast. 

You'd think that we would pick up speed as we get the routines going, but we do not. We pause after putting in just three and honestly, it feels like we'd been at it for a good part of the day.

Breakfast is very late, but fragrant! I cut some lilac blooms to keep us in happy moods.

(What else is blooming now? Oh, small stuff here and there. Late May will bring out the irises and early June will bring out the Peonies, but we're not there yet. I'm staying with the lilac here. Plus a handful of very pretty white anemones.)

Back to the filberts. After breakfast, three more, in the ground!

And then it really does start to rain. Not anything huge, but still, I'm not going to fuss: we need rain. We'll take any amount!

I pick up Snowdrop and we go straight to the farmhouse.

Safe and dry!

But as we leave the farmhouse for the drive home, Snowdrop feels a tug. Sure, it's raining, but she hasn't checked in with "her tree." 

 

And the little chickens hover around us, and they're getting wet, and so we try to chase them to the barn, and as long as we're there, the girl and I usher all the chickens into the coop for the night. The two of us are very proud of our accomplishment, rain or no rain!

When I was little, I liked rainy days in my grandparents' village home. You'd hear the rain falling on the roof and you'd smell all the wet trees and plants outside afterwards and if the rain was stubbornly long, my sister and I would go mushroom picking in the forest immediately after. At the farmette, a rain offers gifts as well -- the sounds, the smells, yes of course. And though there are no forests with mushrooms nearby, a rain also offers a chance to sit down and take it easy for a bit. Spring is a time of never ending work for us. It's good to get the gift of a break.

The evening remains wet. And that's okay. I cook up a ton of asparagus (tis the season!) and scramble some eggs and sprinkle them with garden chives. A slice of smoked salmon on the side, a salad with many green and red things in it and we have a meal. I think about the grateful plants taking in the rain and the grateful me, taking in that much needed break. A fine day indeed!