Spring!!!!!!!

It is the season of newness and it is the season of crazy, fast growth.  I love all the seasons, and for me Lady Spring is the season of Potential.

Potential to begin something new and different.  Potential to tap into the creative energy of Spring.  It is a stunning morning.  I see the sun is rising through the trees to the east, and the air is still, after the storm.

Yesterday with waning moon in Capricorn, I was determined to plant potatoes.  It's March! Time is fleeting.  The ground has been ready for days, and the potatoes were cut into seed pieces with their little eyes growing like mad, shouting "Plant us!"

But yesterday it was also raining and blustery, and I waited for hours, doing other things, hoping for the sky to clear and the rain to stop and then towards late afternoon, I realized I needed to make a choice.

I decided to go out in the rain and plant potatoes.  I was dressed warmly, and as I was putting my boots on, I remembered other times in my life when I needed the weather to accommodate me, and it did.  So I just decided to ask.

I asked that the storm would subside while I planted potatoes.  I stepped outside and the rain slowed to a light drizzle, and by the time I had my garden fork and trowel in hand, the rain stopped entirely.  There was an actual break in the clouds and the sky brightened as the sun shone through.

I could see a wall of big dark clouds in the distant horizon, and they were coming fast, so I worked fast too.  I tucked the little seed potatoes into their well prepped beds and finished just as the clouds rolled in overhead, hiding the sun.  I straightened up and heard the wind roaring and saw the trees windmilling their branches.  And I laughed.  Their was so much joy in the wildness of the storm all around me, and so much beauty in the synchronous timing of the weather during planting.

I put my tools away, and walked around my place, enjoying the wind in motion and picking up things blown in by the storm.  I took a moment to reinforce the fence in the hen yard, before heading back inside.  I was taking my boots off on the back porch when I looked up to see the rain had started up again.  I laughed once more, and sent out a wave of joyous gratitude to nature and the creative consciousness.  My way of throwing my arms wide to embrace the All.

Life Goes On

My family is contriving to keep me awake.

I stayed up too late last night working.

After I finally slipped into slumber, my husband woke up.  He decided to work in the middle of the night, which usually doesn't wake me, but for some reason I heard every move he made while I was trying to sleep.

Then the crazy cats who used to sleep the night through with their humans, but are now confused decided that if one human is up, the other should be too.

One scratched at the door to get out, one scratched at the door to get in.  After getting up a half dozen times in a stupor, I finally gave up and left the door open.  Then one stood on my head (the heaviest one, I might add) and one tried to eat my blankets.

Finally I gave up.  I could see the sky was getting light and needed to let the hens out.  I wondered why my husband was being so quiet.  I found him blissfully asleep.

I got dressed and fed the cats.  I vowed I would keep waking them throughout the day.  Then I went to let the hens out into their yard.

We had finally established a routine, after the big upset last week, when my favorite hen was taken by a hawk.  But the trickster was having fun with me, and the easy task of getting my hens into their new better protected yard, turned into a chicken rodeo.  I came into the house, panting and wheezing.

It's no good going back to sleep.  I have a ton of work to do today.  So all I can do is sit here for a few moments with a cup of hot coffee (usually it's tepid, by the time I get around to it) and look at the magnificent sun rising through the trees, casting long shadows and chasing the mist away.  Watch the dew sparkle on the grass.  And dream of Tuesday, the nearest thing I have to a day off.

I can hear the birds singing.  Why shouldn't they sing?  It's a beautiful day and they got a full night of sleep.

I've decided I will run away from home.  Into my back yard.  I have dreams of building a tiny cottage out of pallets and then retreating there for a full night of rest every evening.  I wonder if I'll see them through.

Excuse me while I go wake the cats...

Inconsolable

Penny

Of Ice and Mountain Slopes

"And in my dreams, I travel with them to realms inseparable from the stars."
--Where the Snow Folk Live

Where the Snow Folk Live is one of three short stories found in Winter Tales available from Pegana Press Books.

Where the Snow Folk Live from Winter Tales available at Pegana Press

Catching Up with Life

I have got the Spring Cleaning Bug, big time.  The weather is warming up, there is a freshness in the air, I see honey bees on blossoms, and the birds have stopped raiding the chicken feed.  And though we haven't even reached February yet, I have felt the call to action, and am charging around the house, dust cloth and broom in hand.

Furniture is being moved, whole rooms, in fact...

Here's a photo from a more tranquil time.  ;^)

March 2009 in the Maritime NW

Random Thoughts - Plastic & Fruit

Single use plastic:  Why would you use a non biodegradable material as disposable packaging?

VS. 

An apple comes with it's own delicious edible packaging courtesy of nature.  

Wheel Spinning

I'm an expert.  I can manifest more ways to spin my wheels...

Oh sure, it looks like real business, and anyone will tell you that life happens.  But really???

Every morning dawns bright with pure potential.  16 hours with which to make things happen.  Then "Fate?" intervenes.

This morning as I began a very involved project, I heard my hens literally shrieking for help.  I know their voices.  I know the clucks and cackles that mean "Hey! All the nesting boxes are full!" and the angry squawks that result from being pecked, and all the other sounds that used to bring me running.  But today, I heard a bonafide SOS distress call.  And I dropped everything, and practically tore the door off the hinges.  I may even have plowed through a fence.

Good thing too.  I startled a hawk and he flew into the fence twice, before finally navigating his way out of the yard.  And I saw before my eyes a landscape completely bare of hens.  Where in the world were my girls?

So I ran down to where I saw the hawk lift off from, and saw hen feathers all around.  With a sense of dread, I started calling and hunting along the fence line, and way back in a corner of the fence, where the black berry brambles have grown to cover an old broken chair, I saw four little feathered bums all crammed into a space that seemed impossibly small to harbor four fully grown hens.

I coaxed them out with my usual "chick chick chick", and they gingerly stepped out of the briars.  I looked each one over, and they all clustered around me as we paraded in triumph back to the hen house.  And I praised them for their quick thinking and ability to protect themselves from predators while I fed them a little extra feed, because who wouldn't want to have a little something after cheating death.

Then I began building little shelters all over their yard.  Which of course took time away from the other project that I had abandoned for the defense of my flock.  I finally stopped at six hiding places.  It was a beautiful day and they had a ball investigating all of the new play houses in their yard.

But when I came inside and looked at the clock it was 12:30.  And so it goes.  Yes, I got on with the project I was supposed to be working on, which also took longer than I intended...

But that's another story.