chips ahoy! (or -- be careful what you wish for)

Stunning landscape, blooming crabs, lovely May-like weather. Perfection. Truly a gardener's dream.

Cloudy initially, but it hardly matters. It's beautiful out there!

(the last of the tulips)

(yet another crab apple)

(wet from last night's rain)

(the last of the unique daffodils)

(magnificent!)

In my walk to the barn, I made a list in my head of all I could/should do today. The blueberries. We should put those in. Weeding. Always that. And I see some forgotten plants that could be moved. Spraying of the deer fodder (with our special hot pepper spray! It works!) -- hostas, strawberries, tulips. Yes, definitely. Need to spray.

And since we have all those wood chips, I should spread them over several beds that are showing many bare spots and plenty of spaces for new weeds to emerge. 

During breakfast (on the porch!)...

I talk to Ed about our various outdoor projects. He has been busy the last few days cleaning out the sheep shed. A young engineer (or programmer, or something) from Poland is going to be staying there for a couple of weeks and the place needs to be made habitable. (I mean, I wouldn't overnight there, even in its cleaned up state, but then I'm older and fussier. There was a time where I did sleep in the shed, with Ed. Those days are, thankfully, behind me.) I do all the work in the flower fields, though Ed does help with the occasional heavy duty job. He calls the flowers my "hobby." I dont quite agree with that definition. It's more like a challenge: to give a helping hand to blooms that need it, to more fully realize nature's potential. It's making room for the little guys. Getting rid of the bully plants. The invasives.  But I do agree that this is my project. Still, I need his help in loading up carts and wheelbarrows with wood chips.

And so this morning, we set to it: he loads and I spend several hours with a pitchfork, distributing the chips in two flower fields -- the glorious one near the house and the front one along the road. (That last one has been neglected for years. Between the drought, and the slope, and the winter road salt, and the encroaching maple roots and branches, it's been a pretty challenging space. This spring, I'm trying to restore its vitality.)

 

(busy bees...)

 

 

It's good for your upper body strength -- Ed tells me as I heave another pitchfork-ful out of the cart. And I agree with that, but it's also true that I don't actually exercise my upper body musculature with any consistency and so for me, this morning's work is tough! Load up, heave out, sprinkle nimbly between plants. Load up, heave out, sprinkle nimbly among plants. Over and over again.

...until it's time to pick up the girl at school.

That smile you see in the photo? It lasted all of one minute. Maybe less. There had been a grave injustice committed toward the end of the day by the teacher and Snowdrop was crushed by the unfairness of it all. It's tempting to dismiss it with a "life's unfair" kind of response, but if you think about it, aren't we all crushed when someone whose respect we need in life points an accusing finger at us with a string of unfair comments and characterizations? 

We talked it through, weighing her options. Confrontation? No, that's not Snowdrop's style. She tells me what would please the teacher most is if she lied and admitted to doing something that in fact she did not do. Well that's not right either! In the end she settles for moving on. 

(a distracting playground pause on the way to the farmhouse)

 By the time we pull into the farmette driveway, she is her old cheerful self again.

 

Monday is our nonstop reading day and today we started in on a new book about a Jewish girl forced to take on a different identity to survive the war years in France ("The Night War"). Heavy stuff, but of course, you can't avoid heaviness with kids. And maybe books like these give perspective. Suddenly the school injustice seems, well, inconsequential.

 

Evening. There's a cool breeze, but still, it's beautiful out there! Looking out our kitchen window, you can't help but smile. Lilacs are days away from blooming, and the crab? Ah, the crab!

You can never tire of it. All of it. The unfurling of gazillion petals in a season of flowers.