Spring arrives

We cannot get over how much difference a week makes. Last weekend we were in the middle of a snow storm. Today temperatures rose nearly to 80°. Suddenly I found myself with spring and summer chores to do. The garlic is sprouted, and we needed to remove the row cover that kept the straw from blowing away in the winter storms.

Hilda removes the earth staples holding down the row cover

Garlic sprouts rising above the straw

The onions are sprouted in the greenhouse.

One of several trays of onion seedlings. These are Walla Walla

Terry told me that our little tulip tree had Promethea moth cocoons hanging all over it. We first saw these over at the Mary Ann Beebe Center when we lived there. I brought one in to see what it hatched out as. 

Promethea moth cocoons hanging on a tulip tree sapling

The caterpillar spins the cocoon inside of a leaf. I couldn’t think of a jar I had that was big enough for the moth, so I left them be. 

The cocoon can be seen by looking at the top of the rolled up leaf

I mowed the lawn for the first time. I love mowing the lawn. The whole lawn didn’t need to be mowed, but I definitely had to do the apple orchard because we moved the girls to their summer pasture Saturday night. There was much squawking and flapping of wings when we took them off the roost in Coop 1, but the settled down in Coop 2 pretty fast.

In the morning, all of the two-year-old chickens, who spent last summer in the orchard, charged out of the coop as soon as I opened the door. Carmella and Madeline, being more adventurous, followed the experienced hens. Bianca, Amelia, Miss Clavelle, and Simone cowered in the corner of the coop and had to be forcibly evicted. After I tossed them gently out the door, however, they began exploring their new environment right away.

The first order of business is always scattering the mulch that Terry so carefully spreads beneath each apple tree. I wanted to get a video of several hens all flinging wood chips here and there, but as soon as I went into the coop, the girls were all certain that I was going to give them something good to eat. I hung around as unobtrusively as possible until Amelia finally went back to work.

Amelia scratching through the wood chips

By yesterday afternoon, the hens had made a dust bath near the coop’s wheel. Here is Rosa Dolores resting in it.

Rosa Dolores in the new dust bath

And a video of Carmelita dust bathing, at least until Juanita pecked at her. Juanita is so mean!

We had a bit of a storm this afternoon. Terry would have liked more rain, but somehow his orders are never fulfilled in exactly the way he’d like them to be. Had the girls gone into the coop, I could have closed the door and kept everything dry. But no, they wanted to be under the coop. As soon as the storm passed, they ran around like crazy looking for worms. Or something. There wasn’t enough rain for the worms to come up, regardless of what the girls were looking for.

The best thing about the changing weather and working outside again is that I felt more like myself than I have since Dad died. Grief will come and go for awhile yet, but we will in fact carry on in his absence.