The end of March

It seems that I often mark the passage of time by the expiration dates on milk. This week, I was surprised to see expirations dates in April. My goodness, it’s the end of March already!

Certainly a walk outside would be no clue to spring coming. One morning this week, the temperature was 17°F. We’ve had a Big Wind for several days now. Even though the sun was out today, the wind sucked all the heat out of it. I keep thinking one of these days I can give up the wool socks, but not yet.

Our visitors this week included this pair of Canada geese. Terry thinks they are foolishly looking for a nesting site. I think we don’t have enough water. They just seem to be grazing.

Canada geese by the fifth oak

We also saw three tom turkeys amble by one morning. It was a workday. I wasn’t able to run out with my camera.

Yesterday was just dismal. Cold, gray, wind howling. So, of course, I made bread. Pita, this time. The recipe only makes 8 pita, so not a big commitment. 7 of the 8 poofed. I served them for supper with chicken noodle soup, and I ate the flat one. I had a lovely lunch today of pita stuffed with lettuce and egg salad.

The first four pita out of the oven

I took a walk this afternoon to check on my work from last week. One strip of paper and straw was intact. One had caught the wind. As fragile as that paper seemed last week when I put it down, it was still in one piece. I hauled one of the hay bales over, straightened the paper, and weighed it down with the bale. I covered it with straw again and got some sticks from the burn pile to, hopefully, keep it where it belonged. The newspapers that I’d put down along the narrow strip at the edge had blown all over the woods. My first inclination was to let them rot there, but I finally did the Grown Up Thing and retrieved them from the underbrush. I repositioned them and got more sticks for weight. I became a seed dispersal vector and had to spend several minutes picking burrs off my sweatpants when I got back to the house.

The bed for the woodland native plants, now secured with a hay bale and sticks from the burn pile

And yet, there are some signs of spring. The rhubarb is starting to sprout, which is pretty darned amazing considering how dry it has been (note cracks in the soil).

Rhubarb buds breaking through the dry soil

And Hilda did a little tutorial with me today about how to start onions. She fills trays with wet potting soil, sprinkles on package of seeds on top, covers with dry potting soil, and waters the tray. She puts the trays on heated mats until the seeds sprout. It was good to smell damp earth and think of summer.

Hilda preparing trays for onion seeds