Really, April? Really?

Nesting

Seeds are started in our sunny southern windows, green and stretching toward the sun, but the branches outside the window are still bare.

As we walk our woodland trails, we see so much of last Autumn lingering.

With snow in the forecast, we are holding tight,

Sitting still, 

Waiting to hatch.

Where ever you are, whatever the weather, I wish you joy.

Wordless Wednesday - Woodland Choir

Meet Mabel

We recently adopted a senior dog whose owner had passed away. She is loving her life on the farm, and I am thrilled to have a friend who is as excited about a walk in the woods as I am.

A Pause

Spring, the sunrise of the year,
Is spilling softly through April
With blue skies yesterday
and snow today.

Ice drips from bare branches
And green shoots peek up through
Cold earth and a whisper-thin layer of snow.

We pause.

Listening to the earth,
Learning from the season,
We pause.

Anyone listening?

"If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need."

~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

Happy winter afternoon!  I am sitting in the village library doing research.  Have been busy on our little farm all year long and this winter, I am hard at work at a book I have been writing.  Hope to begin blogging again, perhaps in the spring.  What I really look forward to is catching up on reading the blogs of my dear blogging friends!

Slow Spring

Spring is slow in coming to my region this year.  Ice is still visible and predominant in the lakes. Snow stands in the shadows in the deep, cool heart of our woods, beneath cedar boughs and fallen trees.  Nights are cold, but the mornings are fresh with birdsong and the wind smells like spring. All through the cool afternoons, spring peepers fill the air with a wild chorus that welcomes the season.

My sons have been building woodland shelters, while robins make their tidy nests.  I have been pulling the remnants of last year's garden, pausing to listen while a Tom Turkey raucously calls for a mate.   The soil is too cold for planting as of yet, but just right for earthworms to revel in.

Daffodils are slow in rising this year, but some precocious yellow pansies at the end of one garden row are blooming brilliantly.  Love those cheery little faces.  Love their eagerness to bloom despite the weather.

Where ever you are, whatever the weather, I wish you joy and an eagerness to bloom.

photo by Aisling, over-wintered parsnips April 2014