Heaven on planet Earth

This is it! One last frosty night behind us and now we are done with it (I'm guessing here, but it is an educated guess). The warmup is here and I can finally take all wintered-over plants outside, and begin planting the tubs that circle the courtyard. The annuals will provide color all the way until October. They may be outnumbered by the perennials in the flower fields (way outnumbered!), but in fact, they are the bedrock of the farmette's flowering season. They will be blooming in mid June when nothing else seems to be showing signs of color, and they will be blooming in September when most perennials will have tucked themselves in for the coming cold spell. Most serious flower people intersperse annuals with perennials (Monet's Garden in Giverny comes to mind), but I've always preferred to separate the two, keeping them close, but to the side. And today, they can finally begin their season of growth and bloom.

Knowing that this is to be my big tub planting day, I get up very early. My walk to the barn is bouncy! First of all, there's still that night's chill in the air, secondly -- I want to get going!

First job: take out all the prefilled baskets onto the porch. Yes! It finally looks beautiful out there. The kitchen table is adorned now by grocery store tulips, garden daffodils and asparagus. Because guess what -- Ed found this year's first spears of asparagus in the farmette fields!

And now I'm ready to head out for my third (and last?) trip to Kopke's Greenhouse to pick up the tiny pots of annuals that will fill the tubs. And there are many containers to fill! [Ed saves last year's hanging baskets and I feel compelled, yes compelled to fill those as well, in addition to the tin tubs that we now use for annuals.]

But wait.

What's that noise up above? 

Five big hawks, swooping into the peach meadow (where the young hens often hang out), swooping into the courtyard (where the older girls like to hang out). I rush out and wave my arms wildly and ...hey, is one of them clutching something white? I run to the barn where I find five chickens. Five?! There should be six!

Ed! The hawks took one of the young girls!

Ed comes out. Are you sure?

Count them!

He counts the five. Have you looked everywhere?

I saw something white flash as the hawk swooped down to the meadow!

Two minutes later, Ed is calling from the barn. The sixth one isn't missing. She is laying an egg in the coop. Your reasoning is off: you see five chickens, you see hawks, you conclude one is taken. Poor deduction.

He's been after me with my hurried, unsound conclusions lately, pointing out a trickle of fallacies as I rush to move from one thing to the next. The guy has the luxury of time! Me, I'm in a perpetual hurry.

Too happy to see all six girls, too happy to be finally planting annuals, too happy in all ways to bother defending my honor, I wave good bye and head out to the greenhouse.

I fill twelve containers with flowers before I have to throw down the shovel and go get the kids. (Ed's in the old orchard, cutting down dead branches.)

I'm not sure the kids notice the new plant additions...

But the UPS delivery person sure does!  

And I notice. Indeed, I'm so determined to finish my planting that I go back to it after the kids are gone, working to fill another half dozen containers before dusk finally sets in.

Yes, dinner is insignificant (spinach and scrambled eggs) and very late.

As I toss the spinash and chop up lettuce for a salad, I think to myself -- it's April 25th and most of my planting work is done for this year! Remarkable. Truly remarkable.