The World in Color

In all the world, two of the most colorful things I can think of happen to be two of the things I love most in nature – flowers and birds. I was standing at the kitchen window one morning last week watching the birds at the feeders. There were Goldfinches, Cardinals, Evening Grosbeaks, Rose-breasted Grosbeaks, Red-winged Blackbirds, Baltimore Orioles, Red-bellied Woodpeckers, House Finches, Blue Jays, Mourning Doves, and various sparrows. Besides the common brown, black, white, and gray of the doves and sparrows, there were feathers of yellow, red, pink, blue, and orange. And out on the lawn, Posey, our peacock, was showing off his glorious iridescent train to no one in particular. Out away from the house, the tree swallows have returned and are inspecting several birdhouses and a pair of bluebirds have settled into a house out in the new part of the orchard. When I look at the birds of the world in all their dazzling varieties of plumage from the spectacular tropical Birds-of-Paradise to the glossy jet black of the raven, and then figure in their voices, their ingenuity in building their nests, and all their behaviors, and the habitats they grace, I see the hand of a Creator who loves them to lavish them with so much beauty. I think one of the reasons He made them so beautiful is that He wants to delight us.

All these were at my feeders at once. These are not my photos.

And the only living things I know of that can rival the birds for extravagant color are flowers. I once read a comment by some jaded atheist biologist who said most people don’t understand that flowers are nothing but plant sex. He stated that it was all no big deal, just plants trying to procreate, that we see them as beautiful because of our subjective human judgment, not because they are intrinsically beautiful. It is true that flowers are plant reproductive organs, but I say, “Wow! What a spectacular way to go about accomplishing it!” Again I see the hand of a Master Creator who designed such intricate anatomies and gave them astonishing form, color, and fragrance. He could have given all the flowers simple, dull, and practical ways of getting the job done without all of that. I see that God loves color and variety of design and infinite imagination.

The only tulips the deer didn't eat.

Dwarf yellow irises.

Forget-me-nots.

Late narcissus.

More late narcissus.

May is the month when the world becomes saturated with color. March and April begin it with the early spring flowers, but in May the world explodes with color. The trees are green again. The birds are in their brightest breeding plumage. The lawn is full of violets and dandelions. The lilacs bloom. And the flowerbeds begin to fill in with the late spring flowers that will dazzle us into June and high summer.

Violets in the lawn.

And May is apple blossom month. When we moved here in January 2000, there were three old apple trees on the property, the remnants of an orchard that was wiped out in the 1920s by an ice storm. One of those trees was hollow and half dead and we took it down. The other two trees, a Yellow Transparent and a King of Tompkins County, are still here and give us lots of fruit most years. One of the first projects I undertook in the spring of 2000 was to plant a new orchard. I planted fifteen trees – ten apple, three pear, and two peach. Over the years since then I’ve added more and more trees. Some have died and been replaced as I found out by trial and error (lots of error) which varieties prospered here. Right now in my orchard I have thirty-one apple trees, two crab apple trees (for pollination), two pear trees, a plum tree, three peach trees, a cherry tree, and a persimmon tree. Some of the trees are newly planted this year, but there are eight from my first planting in 2000 still going. Twenty of my trees should produce fruit this year – if. There’s always a big if. If we don’t have a late frost. If we don’t have a drought. If it doesn’t rain too much and bring on fungus, mold, and disease. If the borers, saw flies, tent caterpillars, coddling moths, and the host of other pests don’t take too great a toll. So many ifs. But when it all works out right, the harvest years make the heartache years worth tolerating.

A map of my orchard.

When my orchard blooms, it is the closest thing to paradise I know. In fact the word paradise comes from the ancient Persian pairidaeza to the Greek paradeisos to Old Latin paradisus to Old French paradis to our English word – and all the ancient words mean “an orchard.” I like to think on the fact that the first habitat of mankind was an orchard. Genesis tells us:

"And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die."

So Adam’s first job on earth was to tend an orchard, and not just any orchard – an orchard planted by God Himself. And the first food our first parents ate was the fruit of those trees. And the event that launched us into mortality came from eating a forbidden fruit. I’ve often wondered what the fruits of Eden must have tasted like. We have delicious modern varieties of fruit selectively bred over many generations from older varieties. I have to think that the original parents of our fruit trees, the trees planted by God and tended by Adam, must have been amazing – perfectly amazing.

A view of the orchard.

My old Yellow Transparent apple tree.

Tuesday after school I finally had the chance to mow the lawn. I do not say “mow the grass” because it was mostly dandelions. The dandelions have gone crazy this year. I’ve never seen so many. There are fields of them around us that are almost solid yellow with them. I like dandelions and I don’t mind them in the lawn. I don’t like them in my flowerbeds, though, and they have a hard time staying where I want them. Dandelions (Taraxacum officinale) are not native to North America. The plant pundits believe the first ones were brought over from the Old World to the New on the Mayflower as an edible and medicinal plant. The entire plant – leaves, stems, flowers, and roots – is edible and nutritious. My great aunts Esther and Eleanor cooked “a mess” of dandelion greens every spring as a cleansing tonic. I tried that once and found them too bitter. I was told I hadn’t prepared them properly. They are best served sauteed with butter and covered with a sweet bacon vinegar dressing. I suppose that would make almost anything palatable.

Dandelions in the lawn.

Tuesday was my parents’ 70th anniversary. We arranged for my brother and my sisters and my brother-in-law John to have a Zoom call with my mother. We talked for almost an hour and had a nice conversation. It was almost as nice as being together. Talking like that made me miss them all. I’m sorry we all live so far apart.

The Zoom call with my mother (John hadn't joined in yet).

Wednesday morning it was 27° at dawn and we had frost. That’s not uncommon here, but always unwelcome. I’m hoping it was the last frost of the season. I was not in school that day. I waited until the sun was up and the temperature was rising above freezing before I went out to assess the damage. It was minimal and I was relieved. My main task of that day was weeding the old asparagus bed. There are three asparagus beds on the property and this is the oldest one. It is ten years old and should be giving us lots of asparagus right now, but it’s been frosted several times and it was pretty weedy. We haven’t gotten even one cutting yet. Maybe now that it’s tidy and the weather is nicer it will be happier and give us some spears worth eating. Asparagus is one of the first and greatest vegetable garden treats of the year. Later that day, as if he could sense our need, our friend Bob Jones stopped by with asparagus from his garden. We had it for dinner that evening and it was delicious.

Frosty Wednesday morning.

Thursday was an important day. It was New Chicks Day. I ordered chicks back in February. They are in high demand these days and the first available hatching was the 8th of May. I was notified on Tuesday that my order had shipped. Miriam and I picked them up at the post office after school on Thursday. There were twenty-six of them – nine Black Cochin, eight Americauna, eight Red Star, and one free Mystery Chick. One of the Americauna chicks was puny when we got them and it died on Friday morning, so now we have twenty-five left. We have them in a big box on the back porch with a heat lamp. Chicks are one of the cutest things I know of. They’ll be on the back porch for about three weeks until they are fledged, then they will go down to the middle pen in the barn for a few weeks before joining the flock.

Chicks in their shipping box.

Friday was a perfect spring day. It was 75° and sunny with a gentle breeze blowing out of the west all day. And to make it even more perfect, I was not in school and had the day to do with what I would. I took a walk in the early morning among the apple trees. I came back by the garden and stopped to breathe by the Crandall Black Currant bush (Ribes odoratum) with its bright yellow clove scented flowers. For half an hour I sat in my chair in the small vegetable garden and basked in the beauty of the morning sunshine. Then I got to work. My task for the day was to clean up one of the asparagus beds out in the big garden. The plants in that bed are only two years old, so we can’t harvest them yet. The bed was full of weeds of the worst sort – Dandelions, Sheep Sorrel (Rumex acetosa), Chickweed (Stellaria media), Creeping Charlie (Glechoma hederacea), and Quack Grass (Elymus repens). It took me four hours to pull them all out. The asparagus in that bed has been hit by frost several times and is slowly recovering. I have one more asparagus bed to do, but I won’t attempt that until later this week.

The fragrant black currant bush.

The old crab apple tree in the front yard where my bird feeders hang.

The Shilligs, Stacey, Miriam, and Hannah were all down in Maryland yesterday attending our niece Kailie’s baby shower. I did not go. I didn’t want to spend all that time in the car. So I was home by myself. After a cool and overcast morning, it turned into another lovely spring day. I spent some time with the chicks in the morning. We always try to handle them when they are small so they will be friendly to us, but sometimes that doesn’t work. In my mature flock, a lot of the hens seem to like me. One day last week the upper door to their yard blew open and a bunch of them escaped. When I went out to feed them, they ran across the lawn to greet me and then followed me back to the barn. These new chicks seem especially skittish. I hope we can tame them. I enjoy the company of chickens.

Feeding time down at the barn.

To be at home alone on a Saturday is strange to me. Of all the days in the week, Saturday is the one when the family is here and there are things going on all day – laundry, baking, projects, housework. The house seemed desolate. I tried to fill the vacuum by playing music whenever I was in the house, but it only echoed through the empty rooms and sounded lonely, so I stayed outside as much as I could. But I didn’t do any work. After a week of hard garden work I decided to rest on the seventh day and give myself a Hebrew Sabbath, but not a strict one. I didn’t count my footsteps or anything like that. I took several walks throughout the day. I sat in the garden and read. The only work I did was the necessary chores. My meals were simple – cold leftover pizza for lunch and a bowl of granola for dinner. As evening came on, I retreated upstairs and watched Gardeners’ World and a few episodes of Perry Mason. Stacey, Miriam, and Hannah arrived home at 9:15 and the house returned to some semblance of normalcy.

On one of my Saturday walks.

On one of my Saturday walks.

Today is a second Sabbath for me, but not quite as leisurely as yesterday. We had an early Branch Council meeting at church and then the regular two hour meeting. Today is Mother's Day and the talks were good. We had Stacey’s favorite Mother's Day Lunch when we got home – sandwiches and chips. She likes it because it’s easy for us to prepare and easy to clean up and leaves plenty of time for an after lunch nap. Although we spoke for nearly an hour on Tuesday, I will call my mother to wish her a happy Mother's Day later this evening. The week ahead looks busy. I am in school every day but Thursday. It is the last full week of school. All week after school, I will spend the long evening daylight hours working in the garden. The weather looks a bit concerning. The forecast says we have a chance for frost tomorrow morning and Thursday morning. I will be praying that they are wrong. There’s a chance for some much needed rain on Friday. And May rushes onward.