Tonight we are having rhubarb crisp. Cherisse’s mother brought the rhubarb plants from her garden in Colorado, and they are now thriving. Last year we picked our first, small harvest; this year we should get a lot more.

Along one row of the garden fence are large, stunning peonies, close to blooming now. These flowers are my favorites—ridiculously fat and smelling heavenly, they remind me of dresses that could have been worn by southern belles in Gone with the Wind. My grandmother grew these in her New Jersey home, and after she died my mother dug them all up and replanted them in Madison, Connecticut. When she sold the Madison house, we dug them up again, and now my sister and I each have half.

Plants have histories passed down through generations and from friend to friend.

1,000 plug spawn

We drilled holes in rows along the logs, four inches apart.

Cherisse and Cathleen drilling holes

We then began tapping in the plugs. (The dogs were exhausted.)

Inoculating the logs

Tapping in the plugs

Tanner

Finn

Oliver

Koa

Finally we covered all the plug holes, the ends of the logs and any gashes in the wood with a food grade soy wax.

Applying wax

We will need to keep the logs moist, in order for the mushroom mycelium to grow and colonize the log. They will go dormant in the winter, and should begin to grow through the log next spring. All going well, we will have a lot of mushrooms to eat, dry, and share.

Inoculated logs

It is too soon to plant the vegetables (they are upstairs under the grow light). May is deceptive in the garden—so many warm days lure gardeners into getting a jump on the growing season by planting their heat-loving vegetable plants early. But the nights are often cold, and even the days can drop well below temperatures the plants find comfortable. At best, the plants gain no advantage by going in early, since they don’t grow in the colder temperatures. At worst, they get killed off. I also buy tomato plants from the Good Earth, a wonderful organic garden center in the aptly named Hope, RI. I buy early, because their plants get snapped up quickly. The owners—without fail—warn me not to plant them yet.

The annuals did go in the ground this weekend, however, as did some parsley, cilantro, thyme (which after years of vigorous growth mysteriously died this winter) and rosemary. I weeded the flower garden for three hours on Saturday…one of my least favorite things to do. As always, there are some plants that might be weeds but I am in enough doubt to leave them in for now. Everything in the flower garden is growing so fast and strong this year that if I am wrong, I will sorely regret my indecision.

The chickens followed me about, and I had to shoo them away when they started to dig around my tiny transplants. They pluck at the leaves and the buds of the established plants, so far causing no real damage. We may need to ban them from the garden, but so far I hope they are doing more good than harm. (Last week Cherisse had to shoo them from the vegetable garden where they were pulling out pea shoots. We are in big trouble when the strawberries ripen…they love strawberries.)

It’s a beautiful, clear night and the sky is filled with lightening bugs…about a month earlier than usual. Fireflies are a sign of summer to me, and seeing them now truly makes everything seem just a bit off kilter.

Casey Farm

Rooster weathervane

Plant sale

We ate our first big harvest of asparagus for dinner tonight. Growing asparagus requires a commitment to the future. Preparing the trenches is hard work (especially in our rocky soil). The plants need to be kept well weeded and fertilized. And you need to be patient. The first year after planting, all you can do is watch the beautiful spears pop out of the ground; you eat none of them.  The second year you get to pick a handful. The third year, a bit more. Not until the fourth year after planting can you harvest a full crop. That’s this year.

We planted purple asparagus (which turns green when you cook it). Just-picked asparagus has an intense flavor; definitely one of life’s many joys. Tonight we broiled them and put them on crusty bread with a good, sharp, melted cheese, and topped them with two fried eggs. Even competing with the other flavors, the asparagus dominated the meal. We’ve got many more harvests to come.

Mr. Obama, in the ABC interview today, mentioned that his daughters have friends whose parents are same-sex couples, and they see no difference. One of my friends has often spoken of her daughter’s best friend who has two dads. Sophie will grow up knowing that this is completely normal. Another friend in Vermont has told me of her daughters’ friends with two moms, or two dads. And to them that is unremarkable. My doctor is raising a child with her longtime partner and just a couple of weeks ago their wedding announcement ran in The New York Times. My own cousins are bringing up children for whom this will simply not be an issue.

This is an amazing sea change, but I hope we don’t have to wait for that younger generation to grow up and change policy. Today a friend posted a rather frightening map from the British paper The Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2012/may/08/gay-rights-united-states?fb=native),

showing gay rights in the U.S., state by state, including hospital visitation (and medical decision-making) rights. In brief, in most states outside of the Northeast there is no legal recognition of same-sex couples. We’ve come a long way in a short time, but there are miles to go.

Cherisse has been planting our Fedco order all week, using one of the garden beds as a temporary storage.

Many of the remaining beds are filled with seedlings (planted or purchased), and our strawberries.

We’ve had a few asparagus with many more coming (although slugs have been a problem).

And next week is the Casey Farm plant sale, where I will get most of our tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and herbs…and many unexpected things. The busy season has truly begun!

Seventeen days ago our wandering Dominique stayed out on her latest nest, and we felt something had changed—she seemed ready to hatch her eggs. Since only one or two of her own were in the nest, we slipped in a few others and left her, surrounded by rocks and covered with a latticework of branches.

The chickens are vulnerable all day when they roam about. Hawks are the biggest worry, but the rooster is huge and protective, the dogs are frequently out and on patrol, as are we. More importantly, the chickens belong on the loose—seeing them day after day we feel sure that the risk is worth it. And each day at dusk the chickens make their way into their house. We lock them up to safeguard them against the numerous night predators: foxes, raccoons, and fisher cats. Our deer fence provides only minimal protection because the rabbits chew so many holes in it. We’ve secured much of it with two-foot high metal fencing that’s attached to the bottom, but there are still large stretches yet to be reinforced. One rather large hole by the fruit trees is a frequent escape hatch for Oliver, when he smells something enticing across the road. It was near this opening that the dogs found a pile of speckled black and white feathers this morning, alerting Cherisse to the sad event of the night.

Once we knew our hen’s brooding instincts had taken over, we debated about moving her and her nest. We came up with no good solution though. “Our” half of the chicken coop wouldn’t give her the privacy she sought—and would hinder us when we brought fresh water and food, and collected eggs. Our garden shed could have worked, but the eaves are open and so Cherisse would have had to block them off. We also weren’t sure if the hen would let us move her, and so in the end we took the easy route and left her.

We worried about heavy rains, but throughout she remained serene. After seventeen days watching her sit on her nest—getting up just once a day for food and water and spending the rest of the time in a trance-like state—we had grown complacent. “Broodiness” is one of the traits bred out of most chickens, in the advent of factory farms where eggs are incubated in machines. We enjoyed seeing her follow her natural instincts. And so we failed to protect her from the rest of nature.

At Fedco this weekend, we were looking at some potted medicinal herbs: mints, bee balm, motherswort (all of which I have purchased in previous years). The plants were accompanied by a lengthy description of their many uses and characteristics.

We got to “Nettles” and Cherisse gave a little exclamation. She’d just read about them a few days earlier, after discovering them growing everywhere in our fields. The lovely woman selling the plants told us that the nettle’s sting was often used to treat arthritis. She also cooks with nettles in place of spinach (nettles can’t be eaten raw). The flavor is similar, and evidently nettles are loaded with vitamins and minerals, especially iron.

On Sunday, we looked at our nettle patches, and they are indeed prolific. So we will try them—our own food source growing independent of us.

If a hive is growing too fast, the bees will think of splitting off (swarming) but to do that they need to produce a new queen. The brood cells vary depending on if it is a worker bee or a drone. A new queen cell looks entirely different—more of a volcanic eruption in the comb.

In the newer hive today we found a lot of odd brood production, along the bottoms of the frames. We weren’t entirely sure if they were new queens in the making, but regardless, the brood shouldn’t have been there, so we removed it. (I should say that Cherisse removed it while I held the frames tightly and looked away. This part is a little too gruesome for me, since it means scraping off pupae.)

The bees have had an abundance of food sources. The crabapple and spice viburnum that were so popular last week have been replaced by the holly bushes, which are covered in more flowers than I ever remember seeing in previous years. These flowers should result in lots of berries, and I think we have the bees themselves to thank. (Their previous pollination encourages more growth, resulting in a symbiotic cycle.)

Earlier in the morning Cherisse and I walked around, making final (or near final) decisions on where to put all the plants we picked up from the Fedco tree sale yesterday. The linden will go near the driveway; the maple along the stone wall in front, where eventually it will replace the older, unhealthy trees lining the road. We are moving two hydrangea trees—presents from Connie and Joey when we first moved in—because they aren’t growing well and we think they will do better elsewhere. The redbud will go in their place.

As so often happens when I look closely at the growth around us, I realize we have only a tenuous control on our surroundings. The Russian Olives and other scrub bushes we took down near our vegetable garden a few years ago are encroaching again, and so Cherisse is making another swipe at them (at least she was until she saw the honeybees covering the flowers). By planting the trees and shrubs we’ve selected, we try to stake some claim to the land, but in reality we make only the most minor adjustments.

When we were at the Fedco sale we bought some Snow on the Mountain and Forget Me Nots for a ground cover on the hill by our clothesline. Nothing much grew here, but the chickens have turned over, pecked at and fertilized the dirt. We are hoping these plants will spread down the slope, and protect it from eroding over time.

Each year we look forward to the Fedco tree sale. Our first time we arrived on the opening day, a Friday, and assumed it wouldn’t be crowded. The cars were parked up and down the road, and we had to walk some distance to get there, and then stand on long lines to pick up our order and make new purchases. The following years we arrived before the 9 am start time, and always people were ahead of us.

This year the sale was divided into two locations—a new area housed the trees, plants and bulbs. The original location had supplies, potatoes and seeds. The process was much more streamlined and we got there early enough to avoid lines. But some of the charm was lost to efficiency. I liked the former closeness of everything—and everyone, making selections and dreaming of future growth: the people growing the trees and plants, larger scale farmers, and people like us, growing for our own pleasure and consumption.

As usual, though, we came home with big plans that require a lot of work, most of which will fall to Cherisse this week. Three blueberry bushes will go in, swelling our ranks to nine, and three bayberry bushes. Two hazelnut trees will eventually become large shrubs.

Eight years have slipped by in this house. We have just begun.

Petals from the crabapple fall like giant, fragrant snowflakes in the wind and rain, dotting the ground around it. On Friday the tree was in full bloom, and filled with honeybees and fat buzzing bumble bees. This week all of the bees have had a wealth of food sources. The Korean spice viburnum, with it’s lovely heavy scented blossoms is a favorite with the honeybees. Tiny bees cover the spirea, with its sprays of small white flowers.

A progression of white flowers surround us—the dogwood is almost in full bloom, and just behind it, a large white lilac will soon fill the air with its sweet scent. Each year I am sorry to see the crabapple lose its petals, but soon the viburnum will be covered with flowers…and then the peonies…

Crabapple and honeybee

Buzzing tree

Korean spice viburnum

Spirea