Earth Week when you're... older

It's cold this morning. We didn't quite hit the freezing point, but we came close (and we expect to actually hit it tonight). I had grabbed my thick sweatshirt for my morning walk to the barn and I felt it was not good enough. Nonetheless, the sun's out and the plant life is looking just fine and the birds are everywhere and we are to have another lovely day. Cooler, but still radiantly beautiful.

So of course, given that it's Earth Week (at least in my head), you'd think that I'd hurry through breakfast and rush outside to continue with tending to the flower fields.

You would be wrong.

Breakfast is leisurely and loaded with flowers, because I'd snipped some more fallen daffies and I brought in the outdoor baskets that do not like this cool front that's passing through.

And then neither of us goes out. Too cold -- I say. Too lazy -- Ed mutters.

The reality? Too old. 

Too old to work day after day without pause. Too old to go out in that chilly air. Too old to run out and start digging immediately after breakfast.

 

Finally, after a very long pause, I head out. The goal today is to clear the space for the incoming blueberry bushes. I thought I could also dig some preliminary holes for those guys, but the clearing of the space took so long (saplings to cut back, sticky weed to pull out, old grape vines to redirect, fencing to take down, blackberry canes to cut back -- you get the picture), that I gave up on the digging and finished up the morning with some extra weed pulling in one of the flower fields instead.

Ed worked with me in the new orchard, tending to the neglected blueberries already there, and the chickens came out as well to see what we're up to...

And it was downright bucolic once we got going. But it did take us a while to get going. We are getting... older. The pauses are regenerative. We need to regenerate!

 

In the afternoon the kids are here.Happy to spend a little time on the farmette lands.

(with a violet behind the ear...)

(hugging the recycling can which, by the way, has all my purged papers and files in it!)

(tree frolic)

(making rainbows with the hose...)

(are there any strawberries yet??)

In the evening, Ed is off on his longer bike ride. I run the hose on the newly planted perennials. That's an easy task. Watering will get much more intense in the weeks ahead if we dont start getting our regular spring rainfalls. 

Tomorrow, I get to finally plant the annuals. A marker of mid-spring for sure!