Busy Day

Today was a fantastic day. At first, it was hard for me to tear myself away from the Weather Channel, I was so fascinated with hearing that our forecast was to consist of "plentiful sunshine." Oh, did it ever.

Too much sunshine, in fact, for me to stay inside, with so much on the docket to accomplish today. The first order of business was to finish digging in the garden bed around the lamp post and the clematis vine there.

As I worked the soil free of the grass roots, plenty else came free as well, all the stones and bits of organic material and all the residents, as well, like this catepillar.

And, holy crap! Look at this giant worm. I couldn't believe the size of it, but fortunately thought to lay down my hand fork beside it for comparison. Now there's a worm you want to keep happy...


I had that section finished by around 11 a.m. or so and then turned over the bed where I'd laid out all the seaweed and salt hay a week or so ago.

The last thing I did before breaking for lunch was to test out the soaker hose. I'm always fascinated by the way the water beads up out of the hose. A side benefit of this was that the hose was full of water as it lay out in the noontime sun while I lunched, so it was more pliable for the afternoon install.

The pink azalea by the front door is starting to open today. Beautiful, huh?

The lunch break included a trip to the store, as I needed to pick up a few things for the afternoon projects: twine and pushpins to make some trellacing to help the morning glories find their way up the fence, some plastic knifes to mark where the soaker hose would be buried and a few other things, as well as a tuna sub from the Harwich Subway, where the world's angriest man was making sandwiches.

The soaker hose installation went well, and I wove a path through the garden, burying it about an inch under the soil surface. I tried to arrange it so that it would water the plants who'll benefit most.

Unfortunately, it wasn't quite long enough to cover the whole garden, so I'll still have some hand watering to do in certain areas. But I've also got a lot of seeds to plant which will thrive in drier areas, so it should all work out to the good.

Once that was in place, I built up a series of mounds in the area around the birdbath, which will be the home for the Three Sisters garden. Step one is complete now, with the corn planted in the center of the flattened mound. Once those sprout, I'll plant the beans, and then a week after that, the squash.

Next I made some trellaces on a few of the fence posts and got the older vines planted and trained onto the bottom of the strings. I have a feeling they'll take right off and start climbing up the posts by summer.

Meanwhile, as I dug in the hose, I also moved a few plants into the new bed near the lamp post.

That opened up space for the tomatoes I'll be planting tomorrow. And I was able to get my garden sign into the ground, as well. Also into that bed went the two canna lily plants I've been harboring in pots inside this winter.

I finished up with all I'd planned to do today just as Owen was getting home from work around 4 p.m. Whew...what a long and productive day. My forearms and face may've gotten a little more sun exposure than necessary, but I think I'll sleep especially well this evening, knowing all I've accomplished.


Perhaps the best part of the day was having everything done early enough that I was able to steal a few peaceful moments to sit in the sun on the back porch and do a little reading.

I seem to have a lot on my mind lately, since I find myself re-reading paragraphs as I get into the first chapter of this new book. Fortunately, they are great paragraphs. And what about that beautiful bookmark, hmmm? Thank you, Patrick!!

Here's the northern flicker on the lawn outside the front door this evening.

Earth Day

Twenty -two days after the first seeds were planted, and check out the Sunflower Class of 2008!

I am missing our old greenhouse/garden shed from our last home, as it would be nice to have that glassed-in space to put these larger seedlings, while I work on getting some new ones planted.

Our forecasts continue to look favorable for setting young plants out in the garden, but I'm gonna hold off a while longer, since we have "enjoyed" frosts up to a month later than now. I think I could probably count on global warming, but really, all that's done is give us unpredictable weather...so I'll wait.

Meanwhile, here's my three star pupils.


I've not yet been able to identify this little yellow flower, which is appearing both in the vinca in the front of the house (this photo) and in a few patchy places on the side of Mount Dump-It, in the back yard.

Whatever it's name, it's certainly pretty and a nice splash of color on the greening landscape.

The birds are finding the birdbath, naturally, and we've had plenty of visitors, including this northern flicker, who sits atop the power pole in front of our place every night, singing the sun down into the west. He sounds something like this.

Add to that the cooing of the doves, the cawing and cackling of the crows and their red-winged cousins, the twittering and cheeping of song sparrows and the fancy tune of the cardinal and it's not a bad soundtrack for an evening's garden examination.

It looks like the jalapeno spray I made may be doing the trick, as we have some tulips coming on which look like they may actually get to flower! Fingers crossed.

The tiny sprouts of cut-leaf coreopsis(es) are poking up all over the place throughout the garden...I'm kind of pleased with the way I spread them around. There's also a promising clump of foxglove greening up. Hopefully that'll give me seed stock to encourage a nice stand of them. I've also spotted the tiny rounds leaves of oregano (yes, it's the Oregano That Ate Eastham, come to a new town...bwa ha ha).

As I've mentioned before, I'm keeping my eyes out for the lilies...and also curious to see if the milkweed seeds I scattered around while planting last fall will take. I'd love to get a nice little colony of them thriving here, since the monarchs love them so.

I'm afraid this is not our most glorious Earth Day in the 39 years since the celebration began. Polar bears are threatened by the melting of their habitats. Other bears, I read recently, are being threatened here and abroad by poachers who want only their gall bladders. Bison and wolf populations in the west are being hunted with helicopters (yah, that's fair.). Wild populations everywhere are being forced into ever-smaller patches of protected land.

Kids spend so much time playing video games and racing from one afterschool activity to another, that they don't have time to play outside with a stick and some mud, or to look under the bushes for birds or worms or cool insects. How in the world will our next generations know to cherish and protect the natural world around them?

Of course, the way things seem to be headed, perhaps we won't need to worry about that. Gas prices have reached all new highs. This week food prices seem to have taken a substantial jump, keeping unfortunate pace with the unemployment rate.

And what do you hear on the street, or on TV, or across the blogosphere? "It's the Bushies' fault", or you can substitute in "oil cartel", "gun lobby", "super-delegates", "crazy Christians", "gays" or "Al Qaeda." (Mad Libs, anyone?)

I guess if we have someone to blame, we don't have to take responsibility for anything ourselves and we can sit back and take another one of whatever pill it is we're supposed to need. Apparently the ostrich populations are doing just fine.

I'm not saying the current administration doesn't have tons to answer for. So many endangered species have become more so on their watch and that's sort of the least of their footprint. But we need to remember that in pointing a finger at them, we point the rest of them back at ourselves. What have any of us done to protect the world we live in? And just what do we have to do to get people like that to listen to anyone other than themselves?

Am I saber-rattling for a revolution? I don't know...I'm not very good at being war-like (tho this quitting smoking thing may help...); sometimes it seems like there's so much change that needs to happen, I'm not sure I'd know where to start. And just which castle are we supposed to storm with our pitchforks and torches? No answers...only questions.

Thank goodness it's Spring, which helps me escape from the news and the internet and is available right out the door, without my having to drive anywhere or spend non-existant money. For now, anyway.

This past week, the forsythia have come into bright yellow and golden bloom all over the place, echoing the yellow drifts of daffodils.

Down at the end of Not Wisteria Lane (which is actually a loop of road, with three different street names attached), there's a lovely pond, mostly surrounded by private homes and not easily accessible to the general public. But I did find a narrow bit of right of way, through a stand of beautiful trees which are home to the blackbirds and crows and echoes with their songs.

We had another lovely day yesterday, though temperatures have still not topped the 60 degree mark around here. As it got suddenly chilly at day's end, the mist and fog rose up out of the pond and off the marshes and wrapped around our springtime world, muting the sun's fading glow.

Another Bird Country Heard From

As I dashed about my morning, addressing things more mundane than the merry planting of pansies (vacuuming, catbox, corraling assorted wandering glasses and plates for the dishwasher, shaving and so on...), I happened to glance out the window and saw a tiny flash of red in the dull colors of the browns and grays of the hill and the remains of last year's foliage.

This bird I recognized right off: the Northern Flicker (yellow-shafted east coast variety, natch). I've only seen a flicker one other time, some Easter sunday about fifteen years gone by, in our yard in the Adirondacks. But they are beautifully memorable.

I'll apologize right here for the photo quality, but I was shooting through a window still sheathed in insulating plastic, and not yet properly washed since our arrival on this misfortunate shore...so actually, I think these pics came out pretty well!

Actually, the window's in the room with the slightly unstable floor, too. I was trying hard to be extra quiet, but there was a moment when it was clear he knew I was inside, watching.

Anyway, the flicker's quite a cool bird, with its yellow and white speckled body, dark crescent bar on his chest and a slash of a red crown on the back of his head. I want to say they are about pigeon-sized, though their demeanor is...at a loss here...more woodpecker-y. The flicker's legs aren't as long, but it reminds me of the green heron we had visit us one spring in Eastham.

Being one of the larger members of the woodpecker family makes them kind of distinctive amongst a world of smaller birds. Foraging on the ground for ants and grubs distinguishes him from many of his woodpecker brethren...at least, among the few varieties I usually see.

Flickers are also known far and wide by annoyed homeowners, due to the loud rapping against the outsides of people's houses being an integral part of their mating call. In keeping with the Principles of Murphy, the louder the rapping, the more the girl bird is meant to be impressed.

So far, we've had none of that from this guy, since this was his first appearance (to me, anyway) on our stage.


I enjoyed watching him, as he pecked into the dirt of the hillside, his long beak loosening and tossing the soil as he searched for ants and grubs. He moved in an uneven line across the side of the hill, moving closer to the apple tree...and really, he was working toward the same goal as I am, in cleaning and rejuvenating this hillside into something more beautiful than the utilitarian lump it is now. Who knows what sorts of seeds his rooting around in there might activate?

I can imagine the wild (extant) growth out there dotted with the occasional dwarf evergreen or clump of daylilies or creeping phlox, not only for erosion control, but also as cover for the many birds who forage out there in the open every day. This guy was particularly alert as he went about his work, not only glancing toward my vantage point from time to time, but also regularly stopping his digging to scan the open skies above.

That last shot is probably not the best of the bunch, but the only one where you catch the slightest glimpse of the red stripe on his head.