Flutter-by

As I was hosing off the chickens' waterer in the backyard this afternoon, a beautiful neon-blue butterfly (maybe a moth?) began to dance around my feet.  I ran inside to grab the camera, hoping to record the amazing color.

She whirled and she swirled, never alighting with her wings open.

You can almost understand the glowing periwinkle in this photo, but not quite.

And when she finally held still, I could see...

...that the other side of her wings was not blue at all, but a gorgeous speckled silk.

Every day I am presented with more wonders of the world.  And for that I am grateful.

A Delicate Balance

Amazing.  This huge, ancient evergreen was uprooted when hurricane force winds blew through our area twice just before Independence Day.  I drive past this cemetery frequently, but until they cleared the branches from the trunk, I had not realized...

...that it was held up by a single tombstone.  Imagine the shock to the old bones below!

Another day or two and they will have cleared the entire thing away.  Soon the only memories of the huge storms of summer 2010 will be newly sunny flower beds, and fresh shingles.

Hormonal Hens

Mid-summer means broody hens here at Busy Solitude Farm.  Eartha and the gold hen are excellent nest setters.  They've been stuck for weeks, though they occasionally move over one box, so nothing has been hatchable yet.

This morning I entered the hen pen just as both broodies were taking a break, letting other hens lay in the boxes.

In fact, all three boxes were occupied.  If you think about it, that makes major complications for me!  Each evening I come out with my Sharpie and mark the eggs that are allowed to stay, whisking away any new eggs I'd like to eat.  If a broody hen had her way, she'd set sixteen or twenty eggs.  But even these big "heavy breed" hens can't cover that many effectively.  So I allow about six eggs and take the rest.

It's quite warm today, nearly 90 before lunchtime.  All the hens are panting while inside, then racing outside where they can find some shade.  And everyone is a little edgy.  Poor Spot has dashed right and left trying to escape the wrath of a cranky hen.  Finally he found a quiet place.

Sitting quietly on the roost, he is away from the nest boxes, can watch the comings and going of the coop door, and just take a break for a while.

Which I am going to do now, too.  Hormonal hens wear me out!

Garden cement

In June we had about eight inches of rain.  I could not get near my garden -- the soil (originally heavy clay, now somewhat amended in the five years I've lived here) was slimy.

Now we've had dry weather for a week.  And I have a layer of clay cement on the top of each bed.  These zinnias struggle to expand with the hardscrabble crust.  The one on the left has a single sad blossom -- a last ditch effort by the plant to pass its genetics along to another generation.

This bed was equally crusted, and full of weeds.  I've not yet been able to plant due to all the water.  So this morning I began cracking it with a pitchfork, then laboriously crushing each clod by hand to remove the copious amounts of weed roots.  I throw them on the grass next to the bed, then once they've cooked in the sun for a while, I'll run the mulching mower over them, careful to have the "exhaust" chute pointed away from the raised bed.

This is the second time in my five years gardening here that the weather has caused such a horrible situation.  My plot is not large enough to redirect the water anywhere, so I think I will need to do a major rebuilt with higher raised beds to attempt to avoid a repeat.

Any ideas are welcome!

Independence Day

Independence Day.  The Fourth of July.  A day for picnics and fireworks, family and friends.

I remember as a youngster that we would take blankets and bug spray to the field at Lakewood School to watch fireworks.  There would be snacks, maybe a transistor radio.  In those days we did not live in that community, so while we might see a friend or two, it was not like a party for us.  We were there for the show.  As the sun's light faded, the "test bombs" would go off.  Bang!  Pow!  We knew the show was close!

And then the first sparkly, abstract explosion of color would burst in the sky.  Oooh!  Aahh!  In those days the color palette was limited; there were no circles or hearts.  It was simply fantastic sparkliness in the sky.  The most excitingly special fireworks were the ones with whistles -- burst up in the sky, then the high pitched "whhooooooooo" as the color trails extended to the ground.  Oooh!  Aahh!

My sister and I hated the cherry bombs -- their sharp report hurt our ears.  But we'd only duck under the blanket for a minute, because then there would be another Oohh!  Aahh! moment.

In our little community, most of the fireworks were small ones, and they were set off one - at - a - time...  You'd hear the fuse, pfffft, see the trail race up into the sky, then bang!  Just a few of the fireworks were what we called chrysanthemums -- filling the entire sky.  Oooh!  Aahh!

Fireworks came but once a year.  Not on New Year's Day, not for weddings.  The show was on the fourth of July.  So as the show progressed from a golden sparkle, to red, and very rarely sort of blue, we felt already the emptiness that would fill the next 364 days.  Oh, don't let the show end!

But the finale -- oh the finale!  As the recorded music played "Stars and Stripes Forever" (and we giggled and sang "Be kind to your web footed friends, for a duck may be somebody's mother..."!), the sky glowed with white, gold, red, green, bang! bang! bang! bang!  The crowd was on its feet, Oooh!  Aahh!  Hooray!

After the show, exhaustion set in.  Some years we might stop at Baskin Robbins on the way home, waiting in line for half an hour to get a chocolate mint chip cake cone, barely keeping our eyes open to the last crunch.  And always in the car was the heated discussion -- what was your favorite firework?


(I took the photo of the American Bald Eagle at an event presented by the World Bird Sanctuary of St. Louis, and Chikaming Open Lands.)