Monday 2:45 pm,
we are nearly at ice out. I walk clockwise
along the edge of the pond to the first wooded area. In the shadows, ice still comes down the
slope into the water. A bit further on,
a small ice float is caught in the dead cedars. It’s not out yet. Bu joins me at
ponds edge for a cold drink, rites of spring. I’d love to, the thought of all the critters that live at the pond, Beaver
Fever.. I hold back.

 

We move up the hill to the rock garden. I rake as best I can.  Moles, voles and holes… trails criss cross
everywhere I work. My garden was
fashioned on this steep ledge by digging small holes wherever I could find a soft
spot in the rocks. I let the grass stay
put around the planted areas to hold the soil from washing down into the pond, a
terrible mistake I found out as the years have gone by. The grass haunts me, haunts the garden. True gardeners would never call this
haphazard affair a ‘real garden’. Mine
are like the rest of my world, like my stash.. they bloom in happy disarray. It will this year also, unless garden elves
come to transplant, weed, and put things in order.

 

I’m off to clean out the raspberry patch… nearly 100 ft. of
thorny stems. It’s sunny and dry enough
to sit in the field, so this is it.

I’ve been busy..

doing..

with..

under..

oh yes, the ravens came today.

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If you were patient enough, or had time on your hands instead of spending all day raking out last years garden debris, you could have seen the ice melt out of the pond.  It was melting that quickly.  Check out the early morning and mid afternoon shots.

 

Taking those pictures was exactly the amount of time I had to spend looking.  At precisely 7 am Bu started clawing at the door and crying to go out.  She knows the rules, we were up late and the door doesn’t open until seven.  Cats tell time very well. (I once had a cat that never failed to arrive in front of the television at 7:20 when his favorite show started.)  C went down to let her out and make noise (we do that in the morning to ‘scare’ away any predators that might be lurking around needing breakfast).  Then, he headed down to the barn to get fruit from one of the freezers.  At 7:05 he returned with the very, very bad news that the small (luckily) freezer had ‘shit the bed’.  Everything was melted, I needed to get right down there and see what could be done.  Hey, I don’t know when it broke, we were gone for weeks, this was bad.  I put up most of our vegetables and loads of berries and apples and such every year.  With my first, partially drunk cup of coffee in hand, I headed down the drive. What a mess.  I salvaged bags of apples and strawberries, and brocolli that were miraculously still partly frozen.  Bags of stuff went into the compost.  I made apple pies, tomorrow I’ll sauce the rest.  If it went off weeks ago, fortuately it’s been cold.  There are patches of ice still thick on the floor. It’s been cold.  Not today, ice out could be by morning at this rate… certainly tomorrow.

I did see a Blue Heron fly in to check for breakfast.  Ducks came and went all day.  I followed moose tracks up the driveway and through our field, same with deer, watched a falcon fly overhead and listened to the hoot of the Barred owl.  Not bad.