Spring Smiles!

My heart is giggling. Yep, those bluebirds are back... two pair, this year, and, they have arrived in the middle of March!!! My, my. They remind me of the years my husband and I were house hunting, flitting as they do from bird house to bird house, checking out the neighborhood and the food supplies, not yet quite sure which one will be THE one for nesting this year. There have been some spectacular mid-air "buzz off, this is MY space" between the males, but no casualties, thank goodness. We want all the bluebirds we can get! Even though my head understands that, yes, we do live in bluebird country, my heart always goes a'fluttering when they appear.





Time to get those gardens going once again. Lucky us, we still have a large freezer 1/2 full of organic beans, broccoli, chard, zucchini, and tomatoes to last us through til the garden starts pumping out its goodies. By this time last year, we were back to supermarket veggies, so abundance is ours. The seedlings have been started for new crops of lettuce, spinach, Roma tomatoes and those little sweet ones, and broccoli. The seed potatoes and other seeds await some warmer weather. The winter rye has been cut and tilled into the soil along with the composted cow manure. New fences need to be built as we expand the 'boy' garden another 8 feet back.

Spring has come early to our neck of the woods. Summer peeked in for a couple of weeks in early March, raising both the spirits of those folks who'd really rather live south of the Mason Dixon line and the fears of my many orchard owning neighbors. All we need is a few hard frosts to destroy the delicate blossoms that will become apples, cherries, and peaches. That's a complex emotional sea to swim in, but I find myself just loving the early warm days! Some of the more progressive fruit growers are adjusting the way they think about things, realizing that climate change is here and seeing that they need to work with it rather than moan and groan. Some are focusing on natural selection to help them identify fruit stock that is not as susceptible to temperature fluctuations and also inventing new ways to protect the blossoms on early flowering plants. I like that kind of thinking.

The woods out back are coming alive, too. The floor of the dry woods section of the outback is now blanketed with brilliant green of ramps (wild leeks). 


I hear that foodies just die for wild ramps and are willing to shell out mucho dinero to get their mitts on a couple of pounds of them, but I just can't bring myself to think of those signs of spring as potential moola. We picked a small bundle and cooked them up with some beans the other night; they had a nice mellow oniony flavor. In amid the ramps, blossoming wildflowers are starting to appear, too. Luckily, the past few weeks have been rain-free, so our walkabout was not the muckfest it usually is in spring.
Just wait. This, too, shall pass. Today is a cold raw RAINY day!
After all, somethings about spring just don't ever change!