Garden ready

 Wes Groff rototilled my garden . The fee was $45. I tipped him $5. Freedom begins at the end of a hoe. Your freedom ends at the end of mine. What is this power discourse?

A garden gives all the freedom I want.

angle of spring sun

Okay. What's the point? Two points. One, the springtime sun throws the light into spots in the house (across from the piano, here) where I haven't seen it in months. Two, the day I saw this I also saw that two of the four robin eggs in the nest out front were hatched. I'll go for that another time.

spring and smoke

The first day of spring and we burn down the brush pile beside the compost. With the f stop at 22 to get depth of field, see the horse manure heaped on the garden in the background, ready to be rototilled. The flame jumped from the brush to dead vines of the compost pile.

Cumberland moment

Monday was a quick day in western Maryland, including Queen City Creamery in Cumberland, where the sign reminded me--only five days until spring. Oh, dolce de leche tastes like a very mild caramel.

how early can Easter be?

This year Easter falls on March 23. Could it ever be earlier? Technically, yes. It can fall on March 22. That is quite rare. The last time it did was the year 1818, when James Monroe was President of the US.

Think you can stick around for the next time Easter falls on March 22. Good luck trying. The next year it is that early is the year 2285. March 23 happens a little more frequently.

The last time Easter was on March 23 was in 1913. If you're 95 years old or older you were around then. The next time it comes March 23 will be 220 years from now, in 2228.

What's the deal? The celestial spheres, that's the deal. Easter is fixed to come the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox, which is March 20 or 21. How do I know all this? I read it in the Christian Century. I figured out myself the Monroe thing.

Easter can come anytime in your subjective heart you want. But I like the objective reality of the system we have had for centuries. It also makes it harder for secular societies to co-opt it and make it fit in the commercial flow of things. Oh, those daffodils are not from this year. I had to use a late March, 2007, photo, taken behind my barn.

Easter is a response to universe-wide reality. Hallelujah!

life behind the barn

Daffodils have popped up some time ago behind the barn, which faces south. What you see here are at the grape arbor. Forgot to thin them out.

migrants return

Walk around Monterey today and you'll hear new songs. Blue jays and robins have begun to return. There have been sparrows using my feeder all winter.

With Spring coming in ten days, I fill it up. I saw a robin yesterday and two jays have already helped themselves at the feeder. Then a cardinal takes center stage.

The migrants definitely have better voices.

m-i-a is m-e-o-w

Sadly the spring tryst is over. The missing-in-action gray, tempted away from her boring routines by the sleek black, is back. It's once again meowing to get breakfast. It's once again keeping an eye out for Fritz, the neighbor dog. It's once again facing the dull realities of living with limited brain power hearing decline.

Better to have loved and lost...as the saying goes.

Black is gone, too.

Saffron blooms

When it appears that the garden is done for the year, the saffron blooms. This flower here is part two of a complicated life of this member of the crocus family.

First thing in the spring they look like onions pushing up. When the garden is just beginning to produce, the saffron checks out and goes underground until winter is nearly here.

Each flower sports three red filaments. That's what you pluck and lay out to dry. And they become the most expensive spice in the world.