a red haze

It's been miserable wet and chill today, enough so we didn't get any work done outside and the brush- and- cardboard pile waits to burn another time. BUT... but I see a red haze around the oaks and a yellow one around the maples that's the first hint of leafing out. Forty-degree days or no, there's no stopping Lady Spring now.

The last of the daylight's fading; I can still see a washed- denim- blue backdrop behind bare-tree silhouettes. There's a whole lotta chirping going on, but I'm not familiar with enough of the calls I can tell you what flavor bird is monopolizing the conversation. I think I'll remedy that ignorance this summer.

Didn't get a whole lot done today, but I did lop the sawbriar that's snuck into the fenced part of the yard down to the ground, and carried it to the brush-and-cardboard pile, which we'll burn tomorrow (weather permitting).

Started the weeks' worth of cooking, too, with a beef stew, a pile of "medallion" hamburgers and some chicken that's simmering now. Not sure what the chicken's going to be, yet, but with at least part of the broth I'll make "mutt-zoh balls" for the dogs. The plan is to cook two or three days in a row and graze on leftovers for a few days after that. Cuts down on the dishes that need to be washed too. :)

Well, I can't see tree outlines anymore. Full dark at seven thirty. Sure beats what was three months ago, don't it?

re-introduction, after disappearing from a USENET group

Hi all,

I was a regular here in the late nineties, but the group became a spam & flame magnet about the same time I got real busy with other things, and I drifted off for four or five years. Poked my head in here the other day and saw a few familiar faces, and it being the time of year when stuff is poppin and chirpin outside I thought I might venture back and share what observations I manage to write down from time to time.

Fortysix words and only one comma in that last sentence. No wonder I'm out of breath.

All my life the hills and mountains have called to me. Growing up, with a German mother and a father in the US army I'd lived lots of places - the stateside spots always flat and usually near the coast. Of the places I visited as a child Bavaria and Switzerland were the two I thought prettiest; Switzerland with its high wild Alps and Bavaria meaning Black Forest, hills and mostly farmland.

My dad was born in Florida and claimed that state, (he and Mom live there now), and it wasn't until I found the internet in the mid-nineties and dove into the genealogy so many of us discover in our first few miles of this information superhighway that I realized his roots were deep in Appalachia. Scott county Virginia, a place I'd never been.

When I asked it soon became clear he'd never mentioned it because to him this part of the country means outhouses, moonshiners and Beverly Hillbillies (never mind the Clampetts were from Arkansas) - a sad attitude, but he's not going to change and I've given up wasting my patience.

Anyway, finally finding a reason for my visceral attraction to the hills gave me a peace of mind that had been missing, and put an end to the wandering I'd done for most of my life. I've set foot in fortyseven states and until fifteen years ago had never lived in one spot more than thirtysix months, but over the last five years I've become so rooted it takes some need and effort to leave the porch and go to town.

I live with my husband and dogs and cats on the hilly side of Kentucky, where I've been knitting and doing other stitchery-type stuff for most of the winter, which I'll now put aside to till and plant and weed and frolic in the woods and take pictures for as long as weather and free time permit.

Where I sit typing I have windows on three sides. To the east I see a dense row of pines that lines the narrow end of our land; to the south a robin has just landed on the lowest branch of the walnut which'll be the last tree to sprout leaves, and beyond it the woods; to the west is my back porch, stacked with firewood. Beyond the porch I see jonquils in bloom on this edge of where we'll plant corn and tomatoes soon. Today it's overcast but warm; I hear chickadees fussing and windchimes gently donging, and I don't wanna go anywhere. :)

yardening; a new year

I'm a lazy gardener. Look at my yard on a good day and you'll see perennials and self-seeding annuals, a casual jumble of mostly accidental occurrences.

In early summer I'm an enthusiastic mower, enjoying the spectacle of precise paths I cut in the grass, but toward fall the anticipation has faded and I'm content to let yellowing blades grow long and bend into tufts, protecting the earth and next spring's seeds of surprise.

Late in the summer sunflowers bloom among yellowing stalks of millet wherever a birdfeeder has dribbled its overflow. Enormous bushes of calico aster soften the fence corners.

But now it's Spring, the yearly New Beginning.

We live on a dead-end road, near enough a major highway I think of planting a muffling sound barrier of shrubs yet far enough the thought hasn't much urgency. Until recently there was a twin to our house a hundred yards further down the road, another eighty-year-old farm house. I hadn't been inside this twin, but from the road, discounting paint scheme, color of shingle, and the additions made by previous occupants, it's easy to see the two houses were built from one template. This elderly twin of our house burned a couple of years ago, a controlled fire set by the land owners who had lived for some years in the new brick next to it.

I was sad to see the old house go. Standing by the fence chatting with the owners, watching the blaze, I asked if I might dig a few of the jonquils along the fence. I was told to dig anything I wanted.

It was Spring then, but later in the year than it is now, because those yellow flowers had bloomed --were still blooming, in some cases-- and I knew it was the wrong time of year to transplant. But dig them I did, not trusting the goats that would graze the yard the old house had stood in to leave the miniature daffodil clones uneaten. And planted them in a row along the street side of the picket fence which rings our yard. That was two years ago. Last year they gave me a handful of blooms. This year I anticipate a better turnout.

Last week I noticed fat green buds among every group of blades of my fire-sale jonquils, their negligible height nearly obscured by tufts of last year's unmown grasses (which lazily drape themselves through the pickets). Worried that grass and weeds would stifle my little flowers, today I took a weed-pulling prong (what ARE those things called??) and commenced to the road side of the front fence. It didn't take long to make ten feet of planting look freshly tended, but the little cleaned area made the rest of the fence look all the messier.

Our one wheelbarrow is by necessity multipurpose and had just days earlier done duty as firewood-transport. It was upended near the back porch, ready to abandon Winter chores for those of Spring. I heaped the barrow with dead grasses, twigs and dandelion roots and trundled it up the long driveway and to the compost heap out back, leaving my coffee cup by the fence so I'd return (I know me, you see). After I'd dumped the first large pile next to the compost I forked a square yard of rich dirt mixed with eggshells, potato peelings and other kitchen detrius onto it. Then I returned to the fence. Already I felt the half hours' worth of bending and raking, and scattered raindrops urged me to "finish this tomorrow," but I've left too many things unfinished lately. One more load to the compost improved the looks of our fence row, and a slight ache in my shoulders gave me satisfaction of knowing I am throwing off the Winter's lethargy to begin fresh.

In my mind the celebration of the New Year belongs more to now, in the promise of warmth and beauty and renewal, than in the cold dark wet of January.