Two Days in May

 Dang, this is a strange and wild spring. It was January until about April 25; people were saying it wasn't April 25; it was the 115th of January. And that's exactly how it felt, like the winter that would never end. Then it ended and BOOM, on the first of May I walked into the greenhouse and all the plants that had been basking in its gentle warmth were suddenly and inexorably being broiled alive. Winter to summer in one day. I've been cooking this idea for a blogpost about May 1 and 2, all the crazy crazy stuff that happened when spring finally burst open like a pinata.

And then it all happened. It warmed up, and everything woke up, including me. The lull I'd fallen into, of just leaving my plants in the greenhouse until whenever, left in a hurry.

April 25, 2018. Creole Lady finally awakens, like Sleeping Beauty, from her winter-long sleep, and resumes dazzling me as if she'd never languished. Still in the greenhouse. Last week of April and it was still dipping into the lower 30's every night!

Now it was May 1. And the greenhouse looked like this. It was 93 in there with the vent and doors flung open wide. No question about it: My to-do list for May first had just been turned on its head. 

 

 I was going to have to empty it out today, and plant everything out into larger pots and planters, or into the ground. It was that or let them roast alive.

On April 11, I'd found this little female tan jumping spider (Platycryptus undatus) in a shoe in my closet. Well, what was she doing there?? I had brought her down to the greenhouse and released her on the geranium. And here she was again! I gave her another drink, which she received gratefully. She'd grown! And now she would go outside with the geranium.

 

I was sure when I set it out by the Bird Spa on May 1 that Happy Thought Red would never look this grand again. Once the wind and rain got done with it, it'd be a sorry sight. Little did I know how right I was...You don't set a 7' wide geranium outside and expect to keep it that way. But it was Live Free or Die time. The greenhouse was no longer a living option, and wouldn't be until next October. It stands empty from May 1 until late October, because it's just too hot in there for any living thing except paper wasps. The derecho of May 15 pruned it all right, but it still looks pretty impressive. It needed a pruning, anyway.

Before I realized that this (May 1) was D Day for the greenhouse, I'd started a couple of loads of laundry to hang out. And while hanging out the first load, I looked out across the meadow with a sigh and noticed that it was full of yellow rocket. Growl! That's an exotic mustard that cheerfully turns meadows into monocultures of yellow rocket. 
This is the before photo. Yeah, it's pretty. Pretty obnoxious! Each one of those plants has to be hand-pulled before it sets seed. Jeez!!


  This is the after photo. Meadow clear, and laundry basket plus trash can packed tight and full, not with dry clothes but with yellow rocket. I grabbed the nearest handiest thing, as is my wont. Just another thing on a naturalist's to-do list.

While I was weeding the meadow, I heard a meadowlark sing, and spotted him in the top of a tree in the sideyard. He couldn't be serious! Our 12-acre meadow wasn't near big enough for him to successfully nest. But it sure was nice to have him stop through and advertise. He appeared for three mornings, then was gone. His clear slurred whistle stays with me. It's the quintessential sound of springtime. 

 
While watching him, it occurred to me that I needed to check the bluebird box out in the orchard. 
A bluebird had laid a beautiful clutch of five eggs, then left them lying stone cold for at least a week. In a normal spring,  bluebirds commence incubating with the third egg, almost invariably. The last one or two laid have to hurry up and catch up with the first three so they all hatch together. Now here her eggs lay, cold as stones, when they should have been halfway through the 14-day incubation period. I had a hunch she was coming back, and a hunch that today was the day. 

But on my way out to her box, I found this. There ensued a hunt netting eight large morels, which I ended up taking to the New River Birding and Nature Festival to cook up and feed to a few lucky friends. I usually have morels to share there. If you're getting dizzy, hey, me too. Going, going, gone, all spring long.



Morels gathered, I forged on, knowing this was the day I'd find out if the bluebird eggs were being cared for. And it was!! The  eggs were warm as toast when I went out to check. Oh, that was the sweetest thing. They'd been so cold 'til now.

Just goes to show you: never second-guess a bird. They know what they're doing.


 
 Yes, we do.

 

While I was out there, I remembered it was the right time of year to check for Incisalia henrici, better known as Henry's elfin. Its brood plant is redbud, and there's plenty of that in the orchard.

  

I found my little man!!  I love this bug. I love going out to look for it, when I get a feeling it's out there, before the redbud even blooms. I've only ever seen it at the end of the orchard. And I've been seeing it there in early spring for 24 years. There's great comfort in that.

 

Back at the house, it was starting to look a lot like springtime! Hummer feeders are out; colorful planters deployed; greenhouse plants finding new places to thrive in the cooler spring air.  Camera and binocs always at the ready on the front stoop. That's how I bring you all this great stuff, with these Essential Tools. I've been told to expect my Canon 7D to die any old day now, as it's passing the usual number of actuations (190,000) that constitute a normal camera's life. So far so good. I baby that thing. 

The hibiscus were enjoying their shady new digs after the scorching they'd gotten in the greenhouse. 

Amazing to see jonquils still going strong on May 1, when the lilacs were in full bloom.

The first catbird celebrated arriving at Indigo Hill by taking a bath in the newly activated Spa! Oh what a wonderful thing to witness!

I found a silken tunnel in the lawn that I suspect might belong to a very large spider, perhaps Hogna georgicola. I've raked them up while raking the lawn, and I've dug one of them up in the garden before, so I know they go underground.

 

 It would be on the size order of this one. Big.

I think this is a Dolomedes fishing-spider.  Ain't skeert.

Meanwhile, it occurred to me that it was probably getting pretty darn hot in the tower room, where I'd been growing lettuce all winter, keeping us and the neighbors in delicious salads. 

 

Yep. Hot up there, too. So before Liam left for school I enlisted his help in carrying the heavy planters down two flights of stairs, one of them small and treacherous. I could hear the lettuce sigh in relief when it got in the open outside air, which moves and swirls. Down it would go to the bunny-proof glass table on the side patio.  

Man, I hated to cut this uber-sexy flower stalk off my North Dakota rhubarb, but it has to be done before the plant expends too much energy into making seeds. Rats!! I manured it and the peonies next to it as an apology. I mean, I put cow manure on them. Pfft. That sounded weird.

Here's a flower stalk I won't cut off until the last flower falls: my Encyclia cordigera, which is still stinkin' up the bedroom with paradisiacal scents of clove and heady musky perfume. Never has it had better blossoms. I credit manure tea!

Of course, the lawn needed to be mowed and raked, too. It needs that again today. There is so much more to do in spring and summer, but I take great joy in doing it all. It's my cross-training workout when I have no time to run.

Phoebe sent me a blissed-out photo from Maine. Yep, that's pretty much how I felt at the end of May 2, with all this done, and all this to enjoy.

Morel Madness

I left West Virginia, reluctant to leave my friends in Fayetteville, but eager to get home to my gardens and kids and the birds I knew would be flooding into the woods at Indigo Hill.

A shy showy orchis waved goodbye as I left Opossum Creek Resort.

The ONE thing I did not have time to do the day I left for the New River Birding and Nature Festival was look for morels in the orchard. It had rained for a couple days straight and I KNEW they'd be popping up. I didn't even have a chance to ask Phoebe to do it. 

I needn't have worried. That evening this popped up on my cellphone. OMG!!!!

You can't buy a kid like that. You have to make them. She knew. She just knew.

Surely the finest picking we've ever had. They were JUST HUGE. There were about 30 of them!! Phoebe put them in the fridge, unwashed, in Ziploc bags, to await our return. They were fresh as daisies when we came home three days later.

Every time I cook morels, I absolutely hate cutting them up. I love them as they are. Maybe I should sautee and eat them whole. 

That first night, though I was absolutely spent from guiding and speaking and singing at the festival, then driving almost four hours home, I had to honor these mushrooms and the girl who picked them. So I picked the first (and likely, thanks to the horrible winter, the last) asparagus from our bed, sauteed chunks of chicken breast, made brown Basmati rice, sauteed the mushrooms separately in butter, reserved the liquid, took the morels off the heat and reduced the mushroom juice/butter with half and half and sour cream until it was a little thick. Then I threw the morels and chicken back in it and served it Zickhot, which is to say that everyone was puffing like locomotives as they tried to eat it. Just like I want it. I take after Ida in that way. If I don't burn somebody I haven't done my job.

The next night, Phoebe wanted morels again, and since Bill was taking off for yet another week, I wanted to make another special meal. This one was morels prepared the same way, but paired with pulled herbed pork shoulder, acorn squash, and stir-fried vegetables. The morels are at 6:00 on the plate, with delicious morel sauce for the pork.  I was a bit concerned the pork would overpower the morels. Nah. YUM. 

I'm counting my blessings these days. I get to look out at spring rolling over the meadow, where a whip-poor-will is singing as I write. (I wrote this after dark).

I get to sneak up on deer. This morning, this pair had NO IDEA I was peeking from behind the little bluestem, and they walked right past me. This, like all the others in this post, was taken with my iPhone. i.e. no telephoto. I could hear them stepping through the grass.

I get to look up at the spring clouds (these are mammatus, one of my favorite formations, which indicates high roily winds aloft).

I get to watch the sweet polled Hereford calves come into the world and learn all about it.

Dogiepalooza.

And I have this fine sweet little feller to waller on.That's three beds, stacked in a throne. Enough, perhaps. Maybe not.

It's been drizzling and sprinkling and showering for the last day, though total rainfall amounts are not much more than a trace. Still, it gives me hope that the morels, quiescent since Phoebe's find, will awaken for one last May blast. I'm headed out, with visions of success in my head. It doesn't hurt to think that we might luck into a picking like this again.

Oh yes. It's Mother's Day. Though I consider it a card holiday, because it was dreamed up and promoted by Hallmark, after all, I do embrace the little jog it gives me to think about these kids and what they mean to me. I have been thinking a great deal of late about Phoebe, about the end of August, when we will have to do without her.  I called my parents once a week when I was in college, on the rotary phone that sat in the dorm hallway. Usually on Sunday nights, when the longing to be nestled between them on the couch got too intense. You may be sure that texts, Snapchats and phone calls will fly all day long. Still...

I wound up having to replant our 21-year-old asparagus bed yesterday. Through some combination of the bitter winter and overharvesting (prime suspects), ours petered out. Only got three shoots we could eat this year, and they are pictured above. So I dug deep into the bed and put eight new sets of roots into compost-filled holes. Man, I'm digging a lot of holes this spring, and the compost pit and I have become intimate. Who knew we ate so many avocados? So much corn, so many grapefruit? Happy to say that the grapefruit rinds do eventually return to earth.

I looked up from this smelly and mucky job to see this. Phoebe had brought me a bouquet from Caroline Waller's Marietta, Ohio floral studio, Passiflora. Caroline sent it to me out of the clear blue, just for Mother's Day. White lilacs, white peonies, stock that is knocking me over with its spicy fragrance. Yellow roses. Peach iris from her own garden. I sat there on my piles of dirt and compost and bawled.

Liam and I will be spending a whole lot more time together soon, since Phoebe has taken him absolutely everywhere he's needed to go for the last two years. He's excellent company, literally a laugh a minute. When he goes to get his hair cut, his teeth cleaned or his eyes checked, he leaves a trail of charmed women, who come to me later to compliment me on my personable, hilarious son. Liam loves to engage people and make them laugh. He makes his mark. He's never been one to be reticent or too cool for school. No, he looks you in the eye and unleashes a unique and surprising vocabulary, laced with occasional Casey Stengelisms, that bring you up short with startled barks of laughter.

I believe in child slavery. What else are they for? When I've come in from a hard day's gardening, I will sometimes demand a neck rub. Liam, having no choice, reluctantly complies, whimpering softly, "Whyy? Whyy?" 

Happy Mother's Day. Use it as an excuse to enslave your children, if only for the day. You're worth it.

Spring Fever. Cute Dog Photos.

It's a late spring, but it is a ravishingly beautiful one. Thanks to cold temperatures, the redbud has stayed abloom for what seems like weeks. Forsythia hung around forever, too, but now it's done in southern Ohio. A couple of times my rhubarb froze solid and dark, then thawed out and went on growing as if nothing had ever happened.   

I love it when the redbud hangs around until the dogwood comes out. Doesn't always work that way.

A haiku couplet from April 21:

Can rhubarb freeze dark

The leaves all crispy and still

Give up a nice pie?

The answer lies here

In the blue drooping lilac

The rime in the grass

Riddle of cruel Frost.

And the answer was yes. Though I'm more of a cobbler person. I throw it in with some apples nobody wants to eat, some strawberries, top it all with crumble, and then they fight over the last bit.

So we waited and waited for the hummingbirds, which usually arrive April 17. And when she settled on the front porch, managed to get a portrait of this little female, who looks as happy to see me as I am to see her. She was seven days late by my calendar, right on time by hers. If birds stuck to the calendar, they'd be dead. Better late than dead, right, Hum?

Thank you for the fresh nectar, Big Human. It is a nice substitute for honeysuckle in a pinch.

We have a blue jay thinking about nesting around our yard (psst: try the blue spruce!). He has a low rattling call that sounds like Paul doing the telephone on "Uncle Albert." Bill figured that out. Perfect. Bill caught him at it deep in a thicket and I got him in the telephoto. He makes us laugh. 

Brrrp brrp.  Brrrrp brrrp.

Hunting morels, with no success the first two times and a feast the second time,

 we came up on a pair of ovenbirds at the end of what used to be our orchard. I like the way they skulk softly over the leaves. If you listen closely you can hear their light footfalls. You can find them that way, by listening for their tracks.

While I was shooting this I was quietly asking Chet Baker to stay back so he wouldn't flush the bird. All I have to do is whisper "Stick around." 

So he whiled away the time by browsing. He'd eaten some bones the possums dragged out of the compost pit, and needed to clean out his guts. I've never seen him browse leaves off underbrush before. Like a goat, he was. Later he left the bone fragments, wrapped in leaves, on the forest floor. Dogs know how to fix what ails them. 

It also helps to upchuck on the bedspreads. I do that too.

Yes, you do. Twice, two beds. Way to go.

I like photographing this dog. If you haven't already figured it out, he likes it when I photograph him. 

He is Bulldog. He is Terrier. He is Invincible.

And very, very sweet.

We got spring fever here. Nothing for it but to keep going outside.

Bill and I will be immersed in spring at the New River Birding and Nature Festival this coming week, so if you don't hear from me, it's because I'm goin' all Zick on a bunch of festivalgoers. The Rain Crows will play on Saturday night. And our brand new CD, "Dream of Flying Dream," will be arriving in big boxes in Fayetteville, West Birdginia, and we'll get our first look at it. It's all a bit much, but it's exactly how we like it.

Looking for Morels, Which We Didn't Find

Oh, the things you find when you go into the woods.

Looking for morels, which we didn't find

We found other things.
A whole new patch of pawpaws in a place I hadn't looked


Dangling bloody blossoms, calling flies to tickle and play



So that from this strange bell a fruit will form



Banana custard, pulp and seeds in a soft yellow skin.

We'll come back in September.

Looking for morels, which we didn't find

I stopped on a hillside to watch a cardinal build her nest

Followed her to a honeysuckle tangle
And there found a butterfly
never before seen on our land

The round rings on its wings rang a distant bell.
And there in the woods I combed the books of memory
Found the answer waiting, struggling up through the pages and the hard cover of time



A Harvester! Fenisecus tarquinius
Only the second seen in a life of looking for butterflies
And here! on our land, not one but two.


Its caterpillar, the only predaceous one, spurning leaves for aphids.

Number 73 for the property.

But I digress. Numbers are not poetry.

Walking a little farther along, the first turtle of spring
Frozen, watchful



I pretended not to see him. He never pulled in his head.
A victory, however small.

And farther along the same slope
I stop, become still
A crunch of leaves, almost inaudible
I focus like an owl on a spot yards away



Where the second turtle of spring
has drawn in its foot

That sound enough to betray its presence.



Its eye an angry garnet
Discovered but resolute.



Looking for morels, which we didn't find.



Serendipity is the effect by which one accidentally discovers something fortunate, especially while looking for something else entirely. The word has been voted as one of the ten English words that were hardest to translate in June 2004 by a British translation company--Wikipedia

"In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind." Louis Pasteur

Harvester, Fenisecus tarquinus, #73 for Indigo Hill, Whipple, Ohio, April 26, 2009