Our first full week of May was glorious. It’s as if Nature was apologizing for the long winter and late spring by giving us the most perfect weather possible. It was warm – even reaching the 80's by the end of the week. We had a nice rainfall midweek. We had a few luscious foggy mornings where everything dripped with moisture until the sun came up. It was wonderful.
The world responded to the gentle weather with an explosion of growth. Suddenly everything turned green. The fields flourished. The trees burst into leaf. The ferns unfurled their fiddleheads. The woods are green with new leaves and white with the blossoms of the juneberry trees. Everything is blooming or in bud and about to. The lilacs are full of buds and look like they will be spectacular in a week or two. The first of the crab apples is in bloom in my orchard and the apples will soon follow. The lawn is full of violets. In fact there are violets blooming everywhere – in places I’ve never seen them before. They are like purple froth along the wild edges of the yard.
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| Fiddleheads in the woodland garden. |
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| The last of the jonquils. |
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| The first of the crab apples. |
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| Violets. |
In my garden, the honeyberry, gooseberry, and red currant bushes are in full bloom and although their flowers are hardly even noticeable, the bumblebees are crazy for them. Bumblebees need to warm up before they can fly. Their flight muscles need to be about 86° in order for them to fly. If the weather is chilly they have to expend energy to do that, but not when the weather is warm. I often see bumblebees resting on chilly mornings waiting for the air to warm up. These last few warm days, the bumblebees have been very happy, busily collecting pollen and nectar. I counted 52 of them in the gooseberry bushes one afternoon. I love big, gentle bumblebees.
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| Bumblebee on a gooseberry flower. |
On Friday after school we drove over to Draper’s in Tioga County and picked up our honeybees. I installed them that evening in perfect conditions and they seem to have established themselves happily. I’m using a new kind of top bar hive (thank you Chase). I hope it works better than last year’s model. So far, so good. I love bees. In a world that seems to be growing ever more chaotic, the orderly life of bees is soothing to me.
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| Installing our new bees. |
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| Bees happy in their new home. |
We have observed some of our annual Rites of Spring. We’ve turned the furnace off. We’ve hung the hammock up. We’ve been eating asparagus all week and will continue to do so for several more weeks. I moved potted plants – geraniums, rosemary, and gardenia – out onto the porch steps, front and back. I moved seed trays from upstairs to the shelves on the back porch to start acclimating them for Planting Day at the end of the month. Josiah and I planted potatoes on Tuesday. I mowed the lawn on Thursday (except the places where the violets are). The season is advancing beautifully.
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| One morning's worth of asparagus. |
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| Planting potatoes. |
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| The hammock in place again. |
Thursday night was the Spring Concert at the high school. Josiah was heavily involved in it in the high school choir, select choir, band, and jazz band. He won the Band Service Award for the year.
Yesterday was my parents’ anniversary. They’ve been married for 62 years. I have been blessed in countless ways by my parents. They have always been an example of a strong and loving relationship. After 62 years they are still going strong. I hope I’m in as good a shape when (if) I reach that point.
Josiah and I spent most of the day yesterday working on the barn. We finally put up the fence around the turkey yard and let the turkeys out. They are so happy to be outdoors again. At least the tom and one hen are. The other hen is sitting on a clutch of about 20 eggs and only goes outside once a day and only for a minute or two. If even half of her eggs hatch, we’ll be blessed with an abundance of turkeys.
Today is Mother’s Day. I think it a shame that Mother’s Day has been hijacked like so many other “holidays” by the commercial element. I hate all the ads and sales and gimmicks that flood the media trying to convince us that we should prove our love by buying our mothers whatever it is they are selling. I cannot begin to measure the influence and blessings in my life because of my mother. And I have been equally blessed for marrying a woman who has been a righteous influence and a blessing to our children. I just don’t equate my appreciation of them with buying things for them. The “appreciation-through-buying-things” philosophy that seems to be growing bigger each year seems a bit cheap to me. I have always tried to honor my mother by living my life the way she taught me. Hers is one of the strong voices in my head that has always guided me. It may also be that I’m just rationalizing being cheap and a lousy gift giver. I did buy my wife a potted hanging fuchsia for the front porch yesterday. I was at the nursery and they looked so beautiful and I thought she would like it.
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| Stacey with her fuchsia. |
Today on our way home from church we took the scenic route. It’s such a beautiful day, we couldn’t resist. For lunch we had Stacey’s favorite Mother’s Day meal – sandwiches, potato chips, and black cherry Kool-Ade. Now we will have a quiet afternoon, short Sabbath nap, maybe a walk up the road, and then we’ll go Shillig’s for our Sabbath Soiree. We’ve already had a Skype from Sarah and will, no doubt, hear from the other children as the afternoon goes on. Later I will Skype with my parents and wish them a happy anniversary and a happy Mother’s Day to my wonderful mother.
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| The drive home from church today. |
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| The view from Cobb Hill. |
