You know how older people tell you the same thing over and over again? Each time as if it were something new, something you hadn't grasped or even heard before? Well, guess what -- I think we all live and thrive repeating ourselves in much of that we say and do. Perhaps younger people reign it in better, but fact is, we all appear to like repetition! And people living in northern climes are programmed to love it even more -- we are seasonal in our behaviors. Winter's here? Okay, let's rearrange the closet and bring out the hygge candles. Springtime? Let's photograph those tulips and after that, fruit trees and after that, the lilacs, because each one has its best moment and then fades, until next year, when it again will have its best moment and we will again focus our eyes, our lens on the emergent blooms.
Ocean has a lot of repetition and not only because my days are rather similar and writing about them forces a kind of mechanical thinking about what took place. It has repetition because as a person who loves the outdoors, I'm glued to the screen that is the great big earth outside (or on a normal day -- the farmette lands) and I walk through the steps that are seasonally appropriate. And so in one month you will see the same corner of a flower field, again and again, because that is what I am noticing right now (and it may even remind you of a series of photos taken of that same corner, at the same time last year, or the year before). It's deliberate, because I look for those same blooms each year, often in the same places. And in a few days, or few weeks, I'll turn my attention to something else. And this continues all year long.
There is a lot of excitement in the new, but there is also a lot of joy in the repetition. I loved the concentration of crocuses. I loved our daffodil clusters. I'm loving the emergence of very pink, bursting buds of the crabapple! And yes, you will see a lot of crabapple blooms in the next few days. It is approaching its most radiant moment and it is so very beautiful! Let's stand back in reverence and feel the enchantment, the magic that unfolds.
Okay, but first, the morning walk. You have farm animals, you better like repetition because you surely have to endure a lot of it.
Oh, but it is such a stellar walk right now, in the last days of April!
This very warm day deserves a special breakfast. From this place (familiar, right? I keep going back because it's so good!):
The day is steamy warm. Windy but outrageously June-like (high of 78f or 26c). And so finally, finally, I can throw down a tablecloth and we can eat breakfast on the porch! And if that isn't heavenly then I dont know what is.
The plum trees and blueberry bushes have arrived, but we are slow to put them in. I clear out some sticky weed from one of the meadows (another nuisance weed, aka goosegrass or sticky willy), I plant a clematis, and a dozen gladioli bulbs (gladioulus murielae) for those white, late summer blooms, and I finally decide to put my alyssum flowers in a hanging basket. I love the smell of those dainty white blooms, but if I leave them anywhere at chicken eye level, then the hens will eat them all. They absolutely adore those flowers!
Too, I snip off some dried limbs from the many trees that line our walkway to the barn. When you take as many photos as I do each day, you notice dead branches and runners that really should be snipped off!
And wood chips! We've been waiting for a free delivery from any one of the tree removal people in our area and yesterday our most reliable guys delivered a half a truckload. So I spread a bit in the new flower bed and I fill in gaping bare spots in the older beds too.
And I weed. A lot. The creeping bell flower. Always there's the creeping bellf lower. To the racket of the singing Robin and the Song Sparrow and the Goldfinch.
Finally we set out to plant the fruit bushes and trees -- plum trees first. They are just thin sticks and so I dont think we can hope for plums in the near future, but gardening requires patience and a fervent belief in a better future. Ed and I aren't invested in having large harvests, but we're curious types and we try new ideas and yes, there's always the repetition of tasks, but there's also the novelty in the result. Because we can't ever be sure about anything out there. A storm may come and damage everything. A drought may weaken most of the new plantings. A knee may give out, a lung can collapse, a tic may bite (we've found three so far this year, which is sort of a high number for us). We worry about none of this. We think instead about the flowers that will some day (maybe) bloom and the plums that may some day appear.
We dont stop working until the rains come in the evening. We'll work with the blueberries tomorrow or the next day. Right now, I can't say that I'm sorry to see those big clouds roll in. We need more rain and the two of us need a break!
With love...
