A catch-up before bed

I'm a little bushed.  I've been out in our garden the past few days, hoeing, digging up the soil, planting rye winter grass, placing a layer of straw down over it.  It's supposed to grow quickly, a month tops, and then be tilled under to give the soil a good shot of nitrogen before planting the vegetable crops.  I had planted some in late October -- a little too late -- and it didn't take, not due to the lateness really, but to me neglecting to cover most of it with a sufficient layer of dirt. This latest planting should yield dividends.  In addition, I've been helping Richard design and build a fenced-in area around his old chicken coop incorporating as much old wood from our 2 year old, tarped pile of timbers and barn wood and old floor boards behind our house.  This is the last year we'd be able to use wood from the pile because it's starting to get a touch of mold on some of the boards.  But we've got some good and fun ideas in store for its use which include: the fence around the garden, the fence around the new chicken coop, the main structure and foundation of a turkey shelter up in the orchard, and possibly a new open-sided wood shed.  We're very productive these days.

Earlier in the day our friend Dylan stopped by to look at the property across the road and the possibility of helping us clear some of the tall dead fir trees over there.  Before trekking across the road he smiled and asked me how I was enjoying "mud season."  I was thrown by the implication of the question that mud season had just begun for I was sure that we'd been in it for weeks now.  In fact, I remember coming down a main back road on a dark rainy night three weeks ago and it looked and felt like some enemy force had been mortaring it steadily for days, the craters and divets and gouges were so extreme.  Small inland seas had formed in some of the holes.  I'm amazed that car chassis can take the abuse.  But my good ole Subaru, all wheel drive wonder, stood the battlefield test.  Subaru, official New England car, we in Vermont salute you!  Ah hell, I'll list Subarus as reason number 15 I'm living here. Having been a Prius owner in LA my only wish is that Subaru had better gas mileage or a hybrid in the works.  (Don't tell the guys at the Car Store in Norwich, but if Toyota could only design a higher riding Prius I'd be a turncoat in a second.  As it stands these Vermont back roads would have chewed up and spat out my poor little Prius ages ago.  Subarus still rule!!)

2 Canadian Geese showed up at our house yesterday.  They were munching on the indian corn cobs Richard had thrown out beneath our bird feeder out front.  It was good to see them; a sure sign of Spring.  They always look as if they've dressed up for the occasion, out in their Sunday best.  This makes the third family of Canadian Geese we've had on our pond.  Well, the fourth really, because one pair got jostled off last year only for the victory pair's male to meet its feathery demise at the claws of a weasel or fox about 4 weeks after that.  Up until then he'd been proud and squawky, putting up a fuss and flapping his wings at any car that would dare to drive by and disturb his wife and 3 gosling who would often dine (and other things) in our front yard.  It was a fine family.  I loved watching them swim in formation on our pond, or spy on the kids getting their first coltish flying lessons from mom and pop.  Also, boundary setting.  The geese liked us around for we'd come to the pond and feed them, but the mother taught the offspring to keep a safe distance from possible predators.  Unfortunately her husband didn't heed her warming and one day he turned up missing.  For a day and an evening she keened disconsolately in our front yard, pausing to hear a replying call that never came.  It was heartbreaking.  And then, they all disappeared.  The mother and her 3 offspring, gone.  Of course, we feared the worse, that whatever had done in daddy had feasted on the rest.  Survival of the fittest at play on our pond.  But we were wrong.  A week later, Royce and Richard took a country walk and spotted  them alive and well -- along with 2 other 1 parent family of geese -- on a secluded and protected pond a mile away from us.  There was no way the baby geese could have flown that far, so our surmise is that the momma led them there.  They must have waddled, all 4 of them, slowly but surely more than a mile to this pond, down back roads traveled by occasional cars and trucks zooming by and with forests full of predators on either side of them.  They made it and, as far as we know, they survived the year and flew south for the winter. 

Speaking of fowl, Richard's chicks are thriving and growing and it looks as if several of his goose eggs, once lost in the mails and now safely warmed in a gopher-bator of his own design, may hatch.  There's signs of life within when the eggs are candled (that's incubator lingo for holding a light up to a fertile, incubating egg to see if a fetus is forming and healthy).  Keep your fingers crossed.

Poor Sofia, the only true Vermont cat of our feline flock, is feeling punk.  It may be from eating dead flies in our attic, who knows.  She's endlessly voracious and will eat anything.  One of our cats has been getting sick lately and we wouldn't have even guessed it had been Sofia for she's forever darting about, playing, purring, leaping about, putting up fusses and endlessly seducing you for food.  But, it's her.  We're hoping whatever she has passes soon.  It's so sad seeing a pet suffer; they don't understand what's going on.  Not that understanding would make it any better.  

Oliver has come to walk across my lap between me and my computer screen, his hair high in the air Peppy LaPue fashion, completely obliterating my view of the screen for a brief, furry moment.  He must've sensed I was writing about some other cat, ill or no, and he was having none of it.  If it's not about him, it ain't going to be about anyone.  So I'll bring this laid back check-in to a close.  It's past 11 pm here in Vermont which is unheard of.  We're up WAY past our bedtimes, my gosh.  So from our household, adieu, adieu, remember meeeeee!  Sleep tight.