I certainly hope so. These were taken this past Sunday. I went out and watered everything before the sun came up, and aside from some minor damage on some lettuce, everything was fine. I ate the ripe frozen strawberries, as they wouldn’t have been any good after thawing.
Better Than Jewelry
For Mother’s Day DH brought me home a couple of hikers. Hot Springs is on the Appalachian Trail, so each spring we have a fresh new crop of through-hikers, broke and looking for work.
You can tell he knows me—it was the perfect gift. For two days we worked on cleaning out the three foot manure pack in the goat stall, with a little time left for digging in the garden. I generally work pretty closely with our helpers, and this time was no exception, so yesterday after giving them a lift to Mars Hill I came home and collapsed, muscles aching. Today I’m better, and looking forward to getting back out there. At least the barn’s done, though, with no more manure to shovel!
The Blue Pitcher
e.e. cummings poem
i thank You God for most this amazingday:for the leaping greenly spirits of treesand a blue true dream of sky;and for everythingwhich is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birthday of life and of love and wings:and of the gaygreat happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeingbreathing any--lifted from the noof allnothing--human merely beingdoubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake andnow the eyes of my eyes are opened)
After Beltaine
May is a time of near-frantic activity around here. Fortunately the goats were all done with kidding early, so we’re not in the middle of that right now. Mostly it’s DH’s work schedule, the garden, keeping up with mowing, and the constant animal demands.
The pigs spent a good month or so in the goat stall in the barn, but ultimately digging out the bedding proved too much for them (“Oooh, it stinks”, they said), so it looks like that’s back on my agenda, and they are back down at the garden, breaking ground. Yesterday I decided that they were just too close for comfort (they’ve escaped a couple of times and headed straight for my lettuce bed) so we thought maybe they could live out the remainder of their lives in the pasture with the other animals. That turned out to be a universally hated move. The goats hated it, the sheep hated it, the dogs hated it, and the pigs hated it. All day they whined at me through the fence, until finally they just figured out how to go under the fence and came to me where I was working in the yard. So we put them back in their pen down by the garden and they were so relieved they took a long nap. So I guess they’re pen animals.
We spent a couple of weeks switching bedrooms with the girls, and we’re finally just about done. They had a tiny little room off the kitchen that has had multiple problems like a door to the outside that won’t close and a severely sloping floor. Not to mention no insulation, resulting in a luxurious growth of mold on the walls in winter. Our room was much larger and level and has mostly interior walls. So anyway, the switch was just as much of a gigantic headache as I expected. We had to wait for nice weather, since all the furniture needed to be drug out into the yard and cleaned up and repainted. We also bleached and painted the walls of the rooms. Like I said, it’s nearly done—the switch is complete, but we’re still wrapping up a few things. Like the giant pile of bags of old clothes and toys and etc that’s going to the thrift store. And the other big pile of winter clothes and coats and hats and scarves that’s going into storage in the barn loft. But then—presto! It’s like having a new house!