Landscapes With Dog

It is staying resolutely, frigidly, no-pea-plantingly cold in Ohio.  I must look for the silver lining. Which is that these two-week old photos still seem remotely relevant even after the calendrical first day of spring has rolled over and past us, leaving us shivering in its icy wake.

Morning fairyland, courtesy overnight blizzard.

Bloggers are thankful for such small mercies. We get busy; we get caught up in life and putting out other products. Which may include piles of clean folded laundry, myriad meals, speaking engagements, commissioned paintings, poster art, garment art and a new CD from The Rain Crows. thiswasastealthadvertisementpracticallysubliminaldidyounoticethat? Being reduced to irrelevance by, say, a warm front with NORMAL TEMPERATURES FOR LATE MARCH, nice as it would be, would be not so good for the blog. How's that for finding a silver lining? Dopey, I know. Yes, I am shouting, and shaking my fist at the heavens.

I have three-inch tall sugar snap peas growing like Topsy in the greenhouse, hunderts and hunderts of them crammed into long narrow window planters, and the nights are still in the 20's. Now what? Thought I was so slick, starting them in the greenhouse. Har. 100% germination, far as I can tell. Highly enthusiastic peas. I normally get about 20-60% germination when I plant them right in the garden, and wind up replanting two or three times. It's a thing. Tried to beat the thing. Got myself in deep with about 200 pea plants with nowhere to go now. I have a reverence for life that my dad used to describe as Hindu, so you can be sure I'm figuring out how to keep them all alive and, I hope, producing snap peas by early June. The goal being to eat peas before we leave for North Dakota.

So we're traipsing along with Shila and Chet Baker diggin' the old barn scene near my house. I keep seeing landscapes with dog

and toothless barns, oh ghaww I love this barn and dread the day it collapses

when I'm not seeing the remains of a pokeweed (Phytolacca americana) which had the misfortune to grow up in jail. How this plant made it to 5' tall inside a barn encased in stock fencing I don't know. Doesn't look like it was able to fruit, poor thing, and it's etiolated (a lovely favorite word meaning all stretched out from lack of light) but hey. Nice try. My guess is that an eastern phoebe perched on the fenceroll, pooped out a pokeseed, and the seed took it from there. Grow where you're planted. One of my mottoes. Unless, of course, you find yourself etiolated. Then get out and get you some sun.

We tromp around the abandoned farmstead noting details like the dental molding on the once-kinda-fancy front porch awning, dating to a day when they cared about such things

and the fabulous color and texture of the oil tank that marks the well on the acreage, a regular Pollack painting it is

and we see a Boston terrier in a sport jacket go down an allee of white pines

and past an outhouse that yes, really is leaning at a Pisa-like angle

He pauses at the top of the hill where, on Thanksgiving Day, I lost him for a couple of hours. But that is another story. He's looking back, making sure it doesn't happen again. Obviously, he found his little doggie way home, because there he is, still with me, checking to see that I'm coming along.

Yes, Chet Baker. Mether's coming. 

All right then. I will start down the hill.

Oh little dog in snow how you make my heart skip.

As does the cornice of the cabin at Fergus' pond, whose reflection is peeping over the edge of the sish ice that rings it.

Little bluestem looks nice against a leaden sky.

Oh look. There's our house, peeking through the thinned forest our neighbor had logged a couple years ago.  Never mind. It's still forest. It'll grow back.

By now, about 4 pm, it's bitterly cold and a freezing wind is tearing at our clothes. Tears stream down our cheeks but Shila still stops to catch the changing light. At this point I am thinking about hot tea

and last year's cardinal nest, given away by the snow egg it's holding.

Right after I took this photo I stepped off the side of a slick snowy road bank and rolled down it, falling conveniently on the snap fixture that holds the strap on my camera, opening it and allowing the camera and treasured telephoto lens to fall to the ground. Nobody was hurt. Actually it was pretty funny. Ask Shila.

I've got a blitz of speaking engagements this coming week in Columbus (check the left sidebar labeled "Julie in the Flesh" ) so if there's a hiatus in posts it's because I'm taking it to the streets. I'll be back, just like Arnold.