What The Hay?

A peek out the window this morning at 6 am, strongly suggested that I head back to bed.

Unfortunately, things were no better at 7:

“Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened Earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”

—Shelley

Shoveling…

…compost.

Bin three has already been moved out to the resource pile, so bin two was heaved over to bin three, and bin one to bin two. Bin one is now open for this year’s kitchen scraps, yard waste and garden residue. An amazon quantity of stuff goes into bin one, but just a small volume comes out of bin three. (Nice stuff, though.)

In other news, Sylvia (person in charge of tree cookie crafts on Arbor Day) thought it might be good to have some bigger bases, in case anyone wants to make an elaborate project. Dave came over and helped slice up an old ash log into twelve jumbos.

Still distressingly cold.

Tree Cookies

These are from a linden limb.

These, along with many others, will be used for a kids craft project at the Arboretum Arbor Day festivities (actually on April 30).

We can hope that that day will not be as windy as this day. Today’s wind is blowing the paint off the road signs.

Almost

Daffodils almost here.

Warm most of the day, with the threat of storms. No actual storms, however, except for some rain when I rode my bike to get a haircut.

So, let’s talk of vernal pools, of which there are quite a few, including the ones on Serendipity Lane. Vernal means spring, and that’s when they exist. And, although they don’t stay wet the whole year, they do fill a very important role in the natural world.

Check out this brief video of vernal pools in Michigan: Ephemeral BTW, did I mention that the spring peepers are now out in force in the vernal pools around Whitewater?

Lots of Odd Jobs

The morning bright and warm, so outside work such as compost shifting and dirt shoveling. After lunch, an Arboretum meeting, and then, in the afternoon, building eight replacement soil block seed-starting trays. The old ones are decades? old.

The afternoon reverted to cloudy, cool, and windy; but for dinner, tofu based stir-fry, which was just as tasty as could be. We seem to be placing ever more emphasis on pulses.

Garbage night here in Whitewater, what we call a Twofer because both the garbage and the recycling toters go out to the curb. It’s my policy on Thursday mornings to not get up until I hear the garbage truck go by. What decadence.

Seven Trees

The first of the hundreds that are going to be planted at the Arboretum.

Some of our order were delivered to a friend who manages the Cambridge Tree Project, in Cambridge. Five Osage orange, one sweet gum, and one Rugged Ridge maple.
Loaded into the back of the truck then unloaded at the back of the Whitewater city garage and heeled into a bed of pea gravel. To be planted in the not to distant future.