Happy Easter!

We had good weather most of the week. We started out with days in the 70's. A little rain arrived and cooled things down a bit. Today the weather was nice and warm and this afternoon we had a downpour. During the week I spent every minute I could outdoors. The flower beds are changing now. The crocuses are done, the few that are still blooming are fading fast. The glory-of-snow (chionodoxa) is at its peak now. They are the perfect shade of blue, like a clear spring sky. The daffodils, forsythia, and hyacinths have begun to bloom. I love spring flowers. It’s especially nice that the first flowers that greet us after the long winter are also so beautiful.

Glory-of-the-snow.

Daffodils and squill.

Pink hyacinth.

The garden is starting to take shape now. My onions arrived on Monday and on Tuesday I planted them. I planted some of the hardier flower seeds – poppies, cornflowers, and calendula. I also planted some fava beans. I’ve never grown them before. Yesterday I constructed two raised beds, one for lettuce and one for carrots and beets. I still have to fill them with soil. I’ll probably do that tomorrow. Out in the orchard the trees are ready to break bud. The plums and pears will go first and then the apples. I can hardly wait – I think one of the most beautiful of all sights is an orchard in bloom. It’s what I imagine the Garden of Eden was like.

My onion order.

Onions in the garden (you can't really see them) and new raised beds.

Upstairs in my work room, I’ve transplanted some of my seed starts from their trays into individual pots. This week I started all my marigold seeds in trays. Next week I will start my zinnias. Then all my indoor seeds will be started except for the late starters – squash, cucumbers, pumpkins – and that won’t happen until the middle of May.

The tree swallows arrived on Tuesday. While I was out planting onions I heard their high twittering song and then saw them as they swooped in over the orchard. They are busy inspecting the birdhouse out by the hazel hedge – the birdhouse that the bluebirds were inspecting two weeks ago but decided not to use, yet again. I love the beautiful tree swallows with their metallic blue backs and white bellies. The phoebes have returned. I know that because two of them got inside the barn and couldn’t find their way out again. I had to open all the doors and shoo them out. I think they were looking for a place to build a nest. They are welcome to do that, but on the outside of the barn, not inside. The phoebes and the swallows are always welcome to nest here. They eat bugs all day long.

I thought my chicks were going to arrive yesterday. I spent several days preparing a place for them in the barn. I installed a box, set up the space heater, got a waterer and feeder ready, and bought chick starter. But they didn’t arrive. We called the post office and they said there were no chicks en route yet. Maybe they will come tomorrow. We’re on spring break until Wednesday, so I’ll be here to receive them if they do come.

I decided last week that it was time to change from my winter face to my spring/summer face. I usually shave off my winter beard around the first day of spring, but this year I waited until Easter. I had an appointment for a haircut Thursday after school and decided I might as well do the whole transformation. My face still feels cold.

Winter face and summer face.

With this kinder weather, the trees are stirring from their long sleep. Suddenly the mountains and hills have taken on color as the trees put out their flowers and first leaves. The maples turn red – not the glowing red they turn in the fall, but a subtle, smoky burgundy. The willows shine yellow-green. The wild cherry trees are reddish-green. And the alder trees, the first to bloom in spring, have nondescript flowers when you look closely, but en mass they shimmer a silky silvery gray and are especially beautiful when the evening sunlight shines through them. I look every day for the first signs of the juneberry trees to bloom and turn the edges of the forest white with their frothy flowers.

Today is Easter Sunday. In the days approaching this holy day, I kept my traditional observances. On Wednesday I made pickled eggs so they would be ready for dinner today. On Friday I listened to Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. This morning I listened to Part 2 and 3 of Handel’s Messiah. Today at church we sang two of my favorite hymns – Christ the Lord is Risen Today and He Is Risen. I love this day. I love the Lord and my heart is filled with gratitude for his sacrifice, his death, and resurrection that saves us all from death and makes it possible for us to return and live with Him and with our Heavenly Father. “But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.”

We brought Brynn, one of the college students who attends our branch, home with us to join our Easter feast. Jillian, Phi, and Freyja came over from next door. We had some of our traditional foods– ham, fruit salad, pickled eggs and beets, and asparagus – and some new food that fits my new diet – mashed cauliflower instead of funeral potatoes, angel food cake instead of pound cake. We won’t be having zesty carrots because I’m the only one here who likes them and I can’t eat them anymore (sigh).

Our Easter feast.

I love it that the time when we celebrate Christ’s victory over death comes at a time when the earth itself is rising from the death sleep of winter. The flowers, the greening grass, the birds busy with their nests, are all beautiful symbols of the risen Lord’s triumph over death. “For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.” I hope you have a joyous Easter!