Morning has broken
Like the first morning,
Blackbird has spoken
Like the first bird.
Praise for the singing!
Praise for the morning!
Praise for them springing
Fresh from the world!
Sweet the rain's new fall
Sunlit from heaven,
Like the first dewfall
On the first grass.
Praise for the sweetness
Of the wet garden,
Sprung in completeness
Where his feet pass.
Mine is the sunlight,
Mine is the morning,
Born of the one light
Eden saw play.
Praise with elation,
Praise ev'ry morning,
God's recreation
Of the new day.
This is the song that often runs through my head as I take my walks on these beautiful spring mornings. Sometimes I sing it aloud as I walk. I first heard this song on the radio back in 1971 sung by Cat Stevens. I didn’t know then that it is actually a hymn with words written in 1931 by Eleanor Farjeon, set to an old Scottish tune called “Bunessan.” It is a beautiful song and fits perfectly the feeling in my heart as I walk through the dew drenched garden with the birds singing.
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| Scenes from my morning walks: home. |
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| Scenes from my morning walks: the old maples. |
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| Scenes from my morning walks: in the meadow. |
I say that my gardens are “dew drenched” with delight as we seem to have passed from frosty mornings to dew drenched ones. The last frost we had was on Monday morning and it was very light. As the weather warmed, I felt brave as I set plants out on the back porch stairs that I’ve kept sheltered inside the porch for many weeks. They are thriving now out in the open air and in another week I will plant them out in the garden. Midweek the weather turned very warm – up into the 80's. Thursday we hit 87°. The night time temperatures have stayed in the 50's. That’s more like high summer weather here, not spring. But we love it.
With the fine weather, we got a lot of work done on the property. On Monday we finished building the peacock pen. Being built from the old pig pen, it looks a bit ramshackle, but it serves its purpose. We built the shelter inside the pen out of old barn quilts that I painted years ago as sample pieces that had become battered. It’s a very colorful shelter, fitting for such colorful birds. We moved the peacocks from the barn to their pen on Tuesday evening. I think they like their new home. Kurt has a motion camera in his yard and one night last week it recorded two foxes and a coyote in his yard. That has us a bit worried about the peacocks’ safety, but so far the predators haven’t come into our yard – that we know of.
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| The new peacock pen. |
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| Moving the peacocks. |
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| The peacock pen. |
Every day last week I was out in my garden in any minute I could spare, weeding, watering, planting, mowing. I planted carrot, beet, runner bean, and chard seeds. I planted a tub with gladiolus. We also planted a row of beans over in the new garden on Tuesday. On Thursday we helped Kurt prepare the tomato row over in the new garden. We put down soaker hose and red plastic that Kurt got that will make our tomatoes thrive. We won’t put any tomatoes in the ground until after Memorial Day. That evening Stacey and Hannah helped me prepare my cucumber bed. We pulled up seven buckets of weeds, mostly sunchokes (the bane of my garden). On Saturday I put up the posts and panels the cucumbers will grow on. Tomorrow I will start trays of pumpkin, squash, and cucumber seeds that will be ready to plant out in the first week of June.
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| The tomato row. |
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| Spinach, strawberries, and onions in their beds. |
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| Asparagus! |
The flower garden is in transition right now. I guess, being a garden full of living things, it’s always in transition. We are in that time when the spring flowers are fading and the summer flowers are not quite ready. The long flowerbed is mostly green with the leaves of plants that will flower later. The very last of the narcissus, the poeticus daffodils, are in bloom. They are lovely and fragrant and I always regret that I didn’t plant a hundred of them when I see them. The alliums and forget-me-nots are the brightest colors in the long flowerbed. The violas, which ran rampant as usual, are pretty but will soon be pulled up to make room for other things. Soon there will be poppies and columbines and larkspur and the garden will be full of color again. Out in the woodland garden, the bluebells are at their peak. I pruned my lilacs hard early this spring, so there aren’t many flowers, but in a few places – the old hedge at the edge of the woodland garden and the white lilac in the front yard, there are flowers and they smell intoxicating.
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| The long bed from the top. |
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| The long bed from the bottom |
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| Poeticus narcissus. |
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| Alliums. |
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| Bluebells in the woodland garden. |
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| The lilac hedge. |
The flowering orchard reached its peak last week. The warm weather coaxed all the apples into bloom. I’ve never seen so many blossoms. The smell of apple blossoms filled the yard. It was lovely. Now they are dropping their petals. With every breeze the petals swirl in flurries (the only kind of flurries I like) and the ground looks like it’s covered with confetti. Now we get to wait and see how much fruit they set. Finding those first tiny apples is always exciting.
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| Apples in bloom. |
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| Crabapple blossoms for pollination. |
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| Apples in bloom. |
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| Flurries and confetti. |
The bird world is frantic with activity. The baby robins have all left the nest and are hiding in various places around the yard. The parents know where they are and any time I approach a hiding baby, they fuss. The swallows and bluebirds are still fighting over our birdhouses. One day I’m sure the swallows have won, and the next it’s the bluebirds. We’ve had more oriels this year than ever before. They sing from before sunup right on to dusk. We found that a pair has nested high up in the Shillig’s huge wild cherry tree. We think there is another nest across the road too. They are such beautiful birds.
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| Baby robins out of the nest. |
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| "If I hold still, he can't see me." |
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| There's an oriole nest there if you look closely. |
Monday was Stacey’s birthday. We held another celebration even though we already had an early celebration back in April at the Foster’s house. On Monday we had tacos for dinner, Stacey’s favorite meal. She doesn’t care for cake, but our friend Nancy brought her a coconut cream pie, which is her favorite. After dinner, she opened gifts.
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| Stacey's birthday. |
On Saturday Miriam had me open some early Father’s Day gifts. She got me a new bird feeder to replace one destroyed by a bear a few weeks ago. She also got me three new orchids, kinds I’ve never grown before – Rhynocostylus gigantea ‘Spotted’, which has a spicy fragrance, Neofinetia falcata ‘Blanca’, which smells like vanilla, and Maxillaria tenuifolia, which smells like coconuts. I’m excited to grow them. I’ve never grown fragrant orchids before. Great gifts!
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| New orchids from Miriam. |
Today is our Stake Conference and it was broadcast, so we watched it at home. We could have driven up to Wellsville or even Palmyra to attend, but I prefer not to travel if I don’t have to. Speaking of traveling, Stacey and I are going to Utah this week. We are leaving on Thursday afternoon and will be back on Monday afternoon. We are flying out to go to our granddaughter Gwen’s baptism. It’s a quick trip. It will be nice to see some of our western family. Miriam and Hannah will be here taking care of things while we are gone. Next week’s Journal will be delayed until I get back.
