May is here and with it comes bright long days. May, June, and July, the months with the longest days of the year, are my favorite months. The earth responds to that increase of light with a flourish of life and beauty. I could feel the change as we left April and moved into May. The first days of May, so far, have been mild and sunny and fragrant. We still have light frosts some nights, but the chill has left the earth. The light comes early these days. The sky is already brightening when I get up at 6:00 and the sun is up before we leave for school. In the evenings the twilight lingers long after 8:00. Light is life and May is bursting with life.
The trees have come to life now. The willows have their leaves. The maples are in bloom. All of my fruit trees have broken bud. The lilacs too. On our way home from church today we saw the first juneberry trees blooming along the edges of the forest.
In my flower beds the hyacinths and daffodils are blooming. The leaves of the irises and lilies are pushing up and promise to give us flowers in June. I planted flower seeds outdoors last week – sweet peas, calendulas, and poppies. They like cool soil and a little frost won’t bother them. Indoors I have trays of all sorts of flower seed sprouted in the upstairs bay window waiting until Planting Day at the end of the month.
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| Hyacinths. |
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| Daffodils. |
In the vegetable garden the onions, leeks, and peas have been in for several weeks and are growing slowly. The rhubarb is growing quickly and soon will have enough stalk for a first harvest. The thought of rhubarb sauce poured over vanilla ice cream fills me with happy anticipation. Even happier, the first asparagus has appeared. The pointed green and purple tops are just pushing through the soil. In a few days we will eat the first of many pickings of that most delicious of spring vegetables. This week we will plant potatoes. And upstairs there are plants that have outgrown the seed trays that I will transplant into larger pots this week. The bay window is getting crowded. It's time to move some things onto the back porch.
The Amish workers finished the barn during the week. It looks great. There are a few things left for Josiah and I to do like clean up the construction debris and move the feed up into the new loft. We will work on that during this week. We didn’t have enough insurance money left to pour a concrete floor, which was disappointing, but we’re used to the old dirt floor and will live with it, as we always have.
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| The back of the barn with the door to the loft. |
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| The front of the barn. |
Yesterday was a big work day for us. We finally tackled the pile of orchard prunings. We rented a chipper and spent the day grinding branches into mulch. Stacey did most of that work with a bit of help from the rest of us. In addition to our orchard prunings, we had one of the Amish workers cut down a wild cherry tree that was growing in the lilac hedge and we chipped that too. And our neighbor Gordon Erway had a pile of apple branches so we took the chipper down there and chipped those and he let us haul the mulch home. So now most of my fruit trees have an nice layer of mulch under them.
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| Stacey and Hannah chipping mulch. |
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| The orchard with mulched trees. |
While Stacey and Hannah were making mulch, Josiah and I worked on putting the fence back up on the chicken yard. It was hard, dirty work. And it looks like we didn’t do a very good job. When we got home from church today there were lots of chickens out. Apparently they found a way through the fence. We’ll be working on that more this week.
There is so much to do now and it looks like the weather will be nice all week – no more snow in the forecast. I love these long warm days. I will spend every moment I can working outside, loving the work, reveling in the beauty of the season.
