All By Myself

I am alone this weekend. Our niece Audrey (Stacey’s sister Audrey’s oldest daughter) got married this weekend in Salt Lake City and Stacey flew out to attend the wedding. She left on Friday and will be back tomorrow night. I’ll admit that I like a little alone time now and then, but I only like it when I know someone will be coming home in a few hours. With all the children gone, Stacey and I are growing a little more accustomed to being here, just the two of us. But being here by myself for several days hasn’t been fun at all. I can only handle it by playing music all the time. I don’t sleep well when I’m here alone. Every tiny noise wakes me up – like the furnace turning on or the rain that pelted the house during the storm that hit us on Friday night. And making meals just for me is no fun. Most of the time nothing I can make seems worth messing up the kitchen for. And going to church by myself today seemed very strange. So I’m surviving, but I’ll be much better when my wife gets home tomorrow.

Last week was not such a great gardening week. The weather was cold and rainy most days. We had a hard frost on Thursday morning and I was afraid for my pear trees and lilacs, but they look okay. It got cold enough for the rain to turn to snow today. Snow in May, even when it doesn’t stay for long, is very depressing. I’m more than ready for things to warm up and stay warm, but Mother Nature is dragging her heels.

The garden this morning.

I did do some garden related things despite the weather. In an hour when it wasn’t raining, I built a trellis for the fava beans. And in a hopeful moment, I moved all my seed trays and vegetable starts onto the back porch. It’s time to begin their transition to the outdoors. Right now the porch stays just warm enough at night to keep them from getting damaged and they need to get used to conditions closer to what they’ll experience when they get planted outdoors. The process is called hardening off. They go from their infancy on the warming mats under the grow lights upstairs to the cooler porch and then to the more exposed back steps and then, at the end of the month, to the garden – that is if it isn’t still snowing then.

My fava bean trellis.

Seed trays on the back porch.

The rain has been good for the plants, if not for me. The flower beds are lush with larkspur and lupine that will start blooming in June. I managed to keep the deer from eating my tulips for once and I’m enjoying them right now. We’ve eaten two batches of asparagus so far and I will pick another batch tomorrow. In the woodland garden the ferns are starting to unfurl, the violets along the path are at their best, and the lily-of-valley has buds. Out in the meadow the huckleberries are blooming. It looks like there will be a lot of them this year, maybe enough to make some jam this summer.

My tulips.

Lupine wet with rain.

Huckleberry in bloom.

Violets along the path.

Down at the barn, the new chicks are getting bigger. I’ve started to wean them off chick mash and onto regular food. They are getting their first feathers now. The chick we hatched (I call it Lola’s Child – I don’t have Josiah’s flare for naming chickens, and I don’t know if it’s a hen or rooster yet) is one of the ugliest chickens I’ve ever seen. It’s father is Copernicus, our Polish Crested Rooster, so it has a bit of a crest, but it’s really just a straggly tuft. It hatched from a brown egg, so I know it’s biological mother is one of the brown egg laying hens, probably a Red Rocket. It’s feathers are coming in, and they look reddish, but they are patchy. The poor thing looks so scraggly. Lola still fusses and frets over her chick even though it’s too big now to nestle under her wings. I don’t know what I’ll do if it turns out to be a rooster. I already have two roosters that barely tolerate each other, adding a third to the mix would not be good.

The new chicks.

Lola and her ugly child.

In the wild bird world, things have moved into high gear. The oriels have returned and are looking for places to nest. Most years they build a nest high in the Shillig’s huge wild cherry tree. The rose-breasted grosbeaks are back. I have a pair, male and female, at the feeders every day. I hope they choose to nest nearby. They are beautiful birds. I heard a wren singing earlier in the week, so I hung a birdhouse on the kiwi vine trellis and within minutes the wren was busy building a nest in it. The robins with the nest on the down spout have hatched eggs now. I only know that because I found the empty shells discarded on the lawn. Robin’s egg blue is one of the loveliest colors I know.

The robin on her nest.

I’ve been watching a show on YouTube called Begin Japanology that explores many aspects of Japanese culture in half hour episodes. I’m really enjoying it. It has made me very nostalgic for things Japanese. Yesterday, after watching several episodes dealing with food, I decided to make myself some miso soup. It was a cold and rainy day and miso seemed very appealing. I already had some shiro miso paste and some shirataki noodles in the refrigerator and some dried dashi soup powder. I went up the road to the Genesee Natural Food Store and bought a few more ingredients – some kombu and wakame seaweed and some shitake mushrooms. I mixed it all up and added some garlic chives from my garden and ate it while it was nice and hot. It was delicious and so nostalgic. I love Japanese food. Some day I’d like to go back to Japan. There are places I’d like to take Stacey to see. It is a great country with a fascinating culture – and wonderful food.

My bowl of miso soup.

This morning, as I was on my way to church, it started to snow big wet flakes. It didn’t last long and it didn’t stick, but it was disgusting nevertheless. Church today was an Area Conference broadcast to our building via satellite. Our area takes in the Northeastern United States – everything east of Indiana and north of the Mason Dixon Line and the eastern provinces of Canada. It was an excellent broadcast. The main speaker was Elder Dallin H. Oaks of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. The meeting was only two hours long, so I’m home from church earlier than usual. Now I’m sitting here contemplating what to make myself for lunch. I scanned the contents of the refrigerator and nothing looked appealing. I don’t have my wife’s gift for making a meal out of refrigerator debris. I’ll probably just cook up some eggs and sausage. Then the rest of day is empty. It puts me in a funk. I’ve got Bach’s Orgelbüchlein playing to fill up the quiet. I’ll probably do some family history work. Maybe I’ll take a nap. Maybe I’ll look for a book to read. I’m between books right now and that doesn’t help my mood. The week ahead looks like more of the same cool, cloudy, rainy weather – but no snow. That makes me feel a bit better. And my wife will be home tomorrow. That makes me feel a lot better.