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| The front yard. |
We changed the clocks to Daylight Savings Time last night. That means my body clock will be out of sync for a week or so. It means my body will be telling me that I’m getting up too early in the morning and going to bed too early at night. It means I’m getting dressed in the dark in the mornings again. But it also means longer hours to work outdoors in the evening, which I like when I can actually do some work outdoors. But if it were up to me, I’d leave the clocks alone. The evening hours will soon be long enough without changing the clocks. I’m a morning person and I like having light in the early morning.
March has continued its leonine attack on us. Winter still has its claws stuck deep and isn’t letting go. Last week we had terrific wind storms that bent the trees, blew down branches, and shook the house. At the end of the week arctic air blew in and has stayed with us leaving us in the teens and single digits. It snowed a fine dry snow all day on Friday. With the wind and the snow there were times when I couldn’t see the barn from the front windows. There isn’t a lot of snow on the ground, but in March, any snow is too much. And now I see there is a big winter storm headed our way tomorrow night. Ugh.
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| The garden in mid-March. |
The cold air and snow has brought the birds flocking to my feeders – red-winged blackbirds, grackles, cowbirds, chickadees, mourning doves, house finches, gold finches, nuthatches, cardinals, woodpeckers, and starlings by the dozens. The song sparrows and tree sparrows have returned and are hungry and cold. Poor little things. I’ve been trying to take some photos of the crowd at the feeders, but the wind makes the birds extra skittish and they seem to sense when I aim the camera at them and they fly away. I haven’t seen any robins lately. If they were smart they should have flown south again and stayed there until May. Down at the beaver pond there is a lot of avian activity. There have been reports of wood duck sightings on the pond, but I haven’t seen any so far. I have seen mergansers, mallards, and Canada geese.
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| Geese and ducks on the beaver pond. |
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| A hooded merganser. |
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| Two hooded mergansers. |
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| A modest crowd at the feeders. |
The starlings have been a big problem lately. They are looking for places to nest and seem to think the chimney to our wood stove would make a nice site. They fly down the chimney and into the wood stove (when we aren’t using it) and can’t get out again. We hear them scratching and fluttering in the stove and the stovepipe. Then I have to close all the doors on the first floor and open the front door and then open the doors to the wood stove so they can fly out. I’ve rescued four starlings so far.
Down at the barn, things are happening. Our hen Lola has gone broody again and this time I’ve decided to let her sit on four eggs. This time I’m not going to try to move her eggs out of the nesting boxes into a nest on the ground since that always upsets her and she abandons them. I think that after the eggs hatch I can move the chicks to the ground and it will be okay. I marked the four eggs because the other hens will keep laying eggs in Lola’s nest and I have to take out all but the four I want to hatch. So sometime right near the end of the month, the eggs should hatch. I hope they do. I love to watch a hen with her chicks.
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| Lola on her nest. |
I started my first seed tray last week. I planted parsley, onions, celery, petunias, and snapdragons. They’re sitting snugly on the warming mat under the grow lights up in my workroom. It won’t be long before I see green sprouts emerging.
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| The first seed tray. |
Last Monday I started attending yoga classes with my wife. She’s been doing yoga for several years now. It was quite a workout! After an hour and 15 minute yoga session, it took me four days to recover. I was so sore and stiff. The hardest part of it was keeping my balance. We’ll go again tomorrow and every Monday evening from now on. I hope it gets easier as the weeks go by. If you thought there would be a photo of me doing yoga with this journal, think again.
It is very cold today. There is snow on the ground and more expected in the next few days. I look at the calendar and see that we are nearing the middle of March. The equinox that marks the beginning of spring is just eight days away. And it looks and feels like January outside. No, wait, it doesn’t look or feel like this January because we had no snow and warm weather then. I keep telling myself that spring will come. It has to. Maybe it doesn’t. There were times in the past when it didn’t. I’m thinking about Tahiti. Tahiti sounds nice.
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| I can dream, can't I? |
