Spring on the Old Farm

April 10--the day in 1994 my Dear Old Dad, or DOD for short, finally got free of his lymphoma-wracked earthly body and took off to fly with the hawks (and hurl a few down at me). Every year, I try to do something life-affirming on that day, something that he'd enjoy. Often it's potting up the bonsais, or planting the peas, turning some rows in the garden, or poking around an old farmstead. How about that last one? Let's go to the Becker farm!

It's not every day you see falcate orangetips mating. These jittery little bugs are among my favorite first butterflies of spring, right in there with the (increasingly scarce) mourning cloak and much more common spring azure. I thrill to the incandescent satsuma orange of their wingtips, and will them to settle, which they virtually never do.

But this trio was preoccupied and let me get close with my little phone camera. Out of focus, but it gives you that orange flash. Two males are trying to mate with the same female.

She's not having it, though, and wants to hang with just one.

Male left, female right (larger abdomen).

While they're engrossed, I get to appreciate the checkered border of those lovely fairy wings. 

Like a race flag! No wonder they never sit still unless en flagrante delicto.

And the delicately marbled undersides! Who knew? Wow, what a treat. Thank you for making more FAOT's.

Falcate orangetips, or FAOT's as I write in my notes, using a shorthand adapted from bird bander lingo, use the early cresses and rockets (mustards) as their broodplants. You'll see them flying low and bouncily along meadow borders and roadsides. 

The other one out early around here is the cabbage white. I snuck up on this one, hoping it would be a West Virginia white, but the dark patch on the wingtip and little dots on the forewing say cabbage.

This cabbage white is feeding on deadnettle, a creeping Eurasian plant that turns fallow bean and cornfields into a haze of purple this time of year. It's a lovely phenomenon from a bad weed. Its major virtue is that, like all mints, it's pretty easy to pull up.

It was a dreary gray day in what seems like an endless string of them, but I knew that would make the forsythia positively sing, so I decided to head up to the Becker farm to see that.

We passed the Toothless Lady. You may remember the white woman's slip that somehow got caught on a nail after a windstorm. I had plans to get it down and try it on. Alas.

When it finally slipped down low enough that I was able to reach it with a long stick, it was so thoroughly tangled around several nails that I had little hope of getting it. I tried, but it was anchored there for the ages. 

The wind has torn and tattered it until it's no more than a bunch of bandages, hardly fit to wrap a mummy. There will be no ghost slip selfies from me!

I still find it beautiful, and enjoy photographing it in changing light.

I could be wrong, but that warm russet color in the wood might indicate that The Toothless Lady was built of Osage orange. I have it on good authority that her attendant, a small toolshed to the south, is built of that wood. And the protected parts of it are that same beautiful orange color. For that alone, she should be an historic treasure. Not too many Osage oranges around that are big enough to saw into lumber any more. That, and the fact that I love her so. I hereby propose Historic Treasure status for many tumbledown buildings and trees on my routes. Things Zick Loves. Thou Shalt Not Cut or Destroy.

Out the back of the same barn, there is a trail of old clothes stringing down the poison ivy vines. This puzzled me momentarily, until by scanning carefully with binoculars I figured out that they issue from a squirrel's nest at the eave.  That squirrel's been busy, raiding the boxes I would love to look through, but will never be able to reach, thanks to the barn's utterly rotted floors. I am imagining the vintage clothing, chewed through by mice, sorted by squirrels, and crapped upon by 'coons.

Their colors remind me of the Buddhist prayer flags that fly in the Himalayas, starting out red, yellow, blue and white, then fading to gentle pastels.

Whipple Prayer Flags. Squirrel prayers.

The Toothless Lady continues to delight me in all the oddest and best ways. I fervently hope I am not around when she's finally torn down.  There would be rending of garments and tearing of hair.

We forged on to the farmstead.

I'm not sure what colors Chet can see, but he sure gave the big forsythia a long look. I was interested to see that the farm's caretakers, while letting the house slowly deliquesce in a squirrelly mess, decided to trim the drooping wands off the bottom of one of the forsythias this winter. Chet used to crawl under the cave they made to cool down on hot summer days. Sometimes I'd throw a cup of cool well water over his back before he flopped down. 

I walked a circle around the farmhouse, looking for flowers growing unseen. It was too early for the wild red columbine someone transplanted there years ago, but I did find a bit of hawk down caught on a grass tip and blowing in the crazy April wind. 

A little calling card from DOD. I'd bet it was redtail down, being sparkly white like that.

Then I went to see the pheasant-eye narcissus that are growing a little down over the hill. A telephone pole always spoils my composition, but I shoot anyway.

Spirea, or bridal wreath, was just going crazy in the hedge.

Chet went out into the lawn to graze like a miniature Angus x Hereford. Standing there like a cow.

Spirea makes a rather loose, messy hedge, but oh! is it beautiful in spring.

And back of the house, an old peach was blooming as it fell. Here's to blooming as you fall.

On our way home, we stopped to examine a sofa someone had left on the corner. Why would you do this? Hoping someone will like it well enough to lug it home with them? Not wanting to pay dump fees? 

I'll be curious to see if it's still there, three days later (I don't get out much).
Update: Someone hauled it away! Amazeballs.

We stopped to greet the new cattle at the Harris farm. This mama looked at me like I was dropped from Venus. That's how I knew she'd never lived here. That, and I didn't recognize her.  She has a very nice angel on her chest.

Her fat little girlcalf (look at that potchy brisket! That quadruple calf-chin!) looks as much like a sheep as any calf I've ever seen. Slitty eyes. So, so fat. Mama must make good milk. I'll be anxious to see the regular crowd come back from their winter quarters. I miss them. I heard a rumor that Bully will be sold, or perhaps already has. I hope it's not true. I'd miss his marcelled hair and his white-ringed ears, and the way he would oooof at me when I came up to the fence, then let me touch his always-wet pebbled leather nose. I'm still hoping to see him this spring.

Bully, July 2015

And of course I'm anxious to see Spotify and see if her new calf has The Triangle. They always make my day. 

These are the rhythms of rural life, the growings up, the fallings down and the yearly coming around.
Happy Free Spirit Day, DOD.

Spring Pops!

Oh, how I love these showery, flowery days. 

when the rainbow ends in a pot of gold. 

The Forsythia has gone by now, all green leaves and laggard blossoms. When it goes, the roses grow. I cut them back early this year, and they're beginning to bounce back from the horrible winter of 2013. Worried that I've finally lost Rio Samba, but I worry that every single spring, and she always surprises me.

Sometimes the rainbow ends on a real pot of gold. That would be Chet Baker.

I don't know that he's a pot of gold. He's a pot of somethin'. I've been reading some news stories lately about how people get a little squirt of oxytocin, the "love hormone," when they gaze into their dog's eyes. And the dog gets a little squirt too, and they both feel all gooey and good.

I call Chet Baker "Oxytocin Ocean."

The spring sky is pregnant mostly all the time. These stunning ranked Stratocumulus undulatus were much better in person.

I adore spring and fall for their dramatic light. You must run out quickly to catch it when it happens.

Our ancient pear, busting out with a rainbow chaser.

I cannot stay inside on days like this. Come on, Chet. Let's go!

In the driveway bluebird box, the first two treasures.

I go to visit my girlfriends, just putting on their spring formals, dancing in anticipation.

In the Hendershot box, two more. As I write, she's begun incubating with the third egg on April 18. I see her little face peeking out every time I go by. I get Easter eggs all summer long.

And even though nobody's there to appreciate it but me, the old farmstead is abloom, alight with white spirea, pink peaches and quince, gold forsythia, narcissus and daffodils.

The living legacy of settlers long gone blooms on.

I dream of living here, so far away from everything. Not in this house, though. I'd leave it to the squirrels and raccoons and rat snakes. 

Too bad about the dang telephone pole. I like this angle, though, with the pheasant's eye narcissus smelling so sweet, the golden forsythia growing wild in back.

On this day it was so warm I caught myself in an accidental upside-down selfie without my shirt. Sports bra's good enough for a 70-degree day and deserted dirt roads. My favorite kind.

Everywhere, American shad lights up the forest with its white candles. Where's Waldo? The tiny black dot on up ahead.

And a minuscule red eft crosses a gravel road. The smallest I've ever found. This photo is about life size.
I carried him the way he was headed, to a damp ditch. The Deus ex Machina he'll tell his little larval kids about, the hand that reached down from the sky to sweep him to safety.

Who knows how far he's already come, and how far he'll travel this year?

 He's looking for something. Someplace different than where he's been. I don't know how I see them, but I seem to run into them all the time.  Maybe because we're both on a quest.

But no great big benevolent hand is going to pick me up and carry me across. I have to get there all by myself.

My, How They've Grown

Spring is flirting with us. Almost freezing, then sunny and cold, then warmish, then almost freezing. The forsythia endeavors to persevere.

It makes us feel good just to look at it, a treasure chest opened and bursting with radiant gold.


Here, we have had chipping sparrows, cardinals, and even a brown thrasher build their nests, and all have succeeded. It's a good plant, all the better when let go a little wild.

In the woods, the spring beauties (Claytonia virginiana) are blooming. Each pair of leaves leads to a nutritious tuber that bears like to eat. I wonder if skunks do, too, and imagine so.
Liam, Phoebe and I go out to check the frogpools along our oil well access road. They're just puddles, but they're home to spring peepers, mountain chorus frogs, gray tree frogs, American toads and sometimes wood frogs and green frogs. All laid eggs there last year, when early summer rains kept the pools full into July. The rains I'd hoped for finally materialized in the last week of March, and the mountain chorus frogs and American toads are singing full bore. Peepers are AWOL as yet. I can't remember a spring without peepers.

Walking back from the pools (we saw ripples but no eggs as yet), I notice that my boy Liam is getting very big indeed. Well, he's nine; he's not a little boy any more. How can that be?


Phoebe, at twelve, is properly suspicious of my camera. She keeps me at a distance. I usually use a telephoto on her, the way I would photograph a deer.


Farther up the path, as the evening falls, she finds something in the grass that needs to be identified. Paging Science Chimp. I knuckle on over. Policy: If my kids want to show me something in nature, I am there as fast as I can get there. If they ask to go to the newt pond, we go to the newt pond. Showing an interest in nature gets immediate reward.


She is 5'4", only an inch from catching me. She will surely zoom right past and look down on me by Christmas. And yet she can fold up those giraffelike legs and be five again.

Phoebe's find turns out to be a lone grape hyacinth, and we discuss whether it was named because its tiny round bell-shaped flowers look like a cluster of grapes (likely) or because they smell like grape bubble gum (less likely). At any rate, it's a long way from its compatriots that still come up in a mysterious fairy ring behind the old house foundation on the hill.

Liam flakes out, watching the clouds go over.


A bud bursts its binding. This might be a buckeye, or it might not. There's something sorta hickorylike about it.
He gets up, turns around, and I see his father in his face. I wonder if Bill ever sees me there.


Outwardly, I may have given him little more than his coloring and a pouty lower lip, but there is plenty of me inside that soul. Neither of us has much use for team sports. We'd rather watch clouds or draw.

It's time to let spring warm our faces and bring joy back to our hearts. Here's a photo I love from last week.


Chet Baker tells Nina that someone loves her. That's what spring, and Chet Baker, are for.