Getting growing

Every early spring I aspire to grow all our vegetables from seed and enthusiastically press them into pots of fine soil. I water them and place them in a sunny windowsill. Nearly all of our south-facing windows have an overhanging roof above them, however, and every year I watch my tiny seedlings sprout and reach for a bit of sunlight they never find. They grow ever paler and leggier until they finally collapse in defeat. This year I finally smartened up and set up shelves and lights in the basement. How about that...it really works!

Everything I planted is alive and growing, but the tomatoes are especially robust. We've got Heinz for canning, Sunchocola cherry tomatoes, and Brandywines for slicing. I've transplanted them once into larger pots, but they're almost ready for another size up.

I'm glad they're so happy under the lights because they'll be there for a while. I started them awfully early, and it'll be cold and rainy outside for another two months. Just keep on growing!

Bun Bun's first bike ride

I think she liked it!

The child's gone wild

The weather here has turned shockingly lovely, so much so that I declared yesterday 'Outside Day' complete with lunchtime picnic, lounging in the sunshine, bare feet, dinner from the grill, and all that good stuff. Ole has taken right to it, of course, and by the end of the day was covered in sand and dirt with a black eye and a bloody nose--but no complaints until it was time to come inside. Okay, the injuries sound much worse than they were, but I do think the boy has gone a bit wild.

A tree climber just like his mama!

"Careful," I said drowsily from my sunny blanket.

Even tough guys need a snack break.

The wee baby chicks have become teenagers already, so I moved them to a more spacious home in the gym where they can roam around a bit more but still be safe. They, too, got to enjoy Outside Day in the grass and sunshine. 

And here are a couple photos in the garden where Ole helped to replace a fence post from inside the hole. Muddy muddy muddy!

 

Spy in the sky

Our neighbors stopped by Sunday evening for a visit and brought along their new drone. They just fly it around for fun with the hope of eventually taking some good aerial photos with a GoPro camera attached. This thing is pretty cool, and we were impressed by the flight show.

The goats? Not so impressed.

Expert maneuvering--Dale even knows a few tricks.

So quiet, and it becomes nearly invisible up high.

Now Ole will probably want one.

The Way It Is

We honored the centennial of beloved poet William Stafford's birth this week with a visit to Lewis and Clark College. He taught there for nearly 30 years, and the college library held an exhibit of poetry artifacts and a multimedia show of photos he took over the years. My takeaway: Poets sure hang out together a lot! I guess I imagined a more tortured, solitary labor, but Stafford and his contemporaries had a grand old time. Good for them!

Ole found the exhibit a bit dry.

He perked up, though, when we took the campus walk of notable Stafford sites. At each spot there was a placard with an applicable poem (I should have taken a picture of one!). The campus is really lovely--wooded nature paths and the grand M. Lloyd Frank Manor House at the center.
Ole was in top form, biking all over and attracting all sorts of attention from students. Stephanie and I nudged each other and chuckled every time he said her name, too, "Snephanie" in a cute nasal voice.

I'll end with one of Stafford's poems. He was writing a poem a day in the months leading up to his death in 1993 and they all have a calm and wise tone to them, but this one near the end is my favorite.

Signs of spring

Things are changing up here on the hill, and we've had some clues that spring is here. First I spotted this puddle jumper:

Then I noticed a couple of freshly-shorn goats soaking up the warm afternoon sun.

I brought in a few cuttings from the tree outside our dining room. They are Japanese andromeda and smell so wonderfully sweet--a real treat in March!

Seeds are coming up, too. It's our first time growing leeks, but I can already taste the future potato-leek soup.

Hey, are those bare feet? It must be spring!

And finally, the pinnacle of my spring rhapsody...baby chicks! Ole and I picked up eleven chicks at the local feed and seed last week. I love our little fluff balls. They're an assortment of breeds he refers to simply as black, brown, or yellow. Here's a yellow:

We sure are having fun with the chicks. A few times a day, we head down to the basement and Ole points and calls out which one or two he wants to play with and I retrieve them. He makes a little playpen with his legs or perches them on his arm. He wants so badly to run and play with them, hoping they'll take him up on a game of tag. Less than two weeks old, they already have distinct personalities: loud, flappy, feisty, shy. They'll surely be tame with all this attention, and maybe Ole will find a new friend.

Not spring yet, sigh.

My springtime overtures were premature. A nasty, very localized ice storm hit us last weekend and threw us for a loop. Pushed by the cold east wind, this late winter storm came on with a sudden severity, knocking out power, and caking on the ice. I'd already packed our winter boots away and stubbornly refused to get them out again, so we slipped around on the windblown ice. 

This is as close as we got to the ice covered trees. Brick sized chunks of ice were cracking and falling.

Really, Alex, this isn't a good time for tai chi. Oh wait, even the grass is slippery.

Welcoming, isn't it?

An inch of cartoonish textured ice coats the fence and birdhouse

But we've been getting along just fine indoors. I've expanded the fleet of cardboard box vehicles. Ole wanted to help me make this jeep, but I hedged, caught up in a crafty fervor. I put him in charge of the bumper while I cut and drew.

Beep beep!