Um, About That View of the Water He Wanted....

Well, that's what he added to his list of what to look for when we were getting ready to move out of our urban apartment complex.  I found this lovely solar granny apartment on an organic farm, complete with woods and fields around us, chickens, goats, turkeys, dog, barn cats, small children, wildflowers and lots of songbirds.  Just lovely, but no lake or stream really.  Just woods standing in blackwater swamps.  Those don't count, he said, resigned to his fate.

It rained last night.  RAINED.   Honest, the weather forcast was for cloudy with chance of showers, heavy at times, flooding possible in low areas.  Not that different from most days, so we ignored it and went to bed.

This is what we found when we woke up this morning: back yard...

Poor little garden tractor trailer...

The southwest corner and the chard treading water as fast as they can...

Even the front yard plantings of onions & garlic flooded!

But so far the house and driveway have stayed out of the water...  Of course, the drainage ditch running along the county road frontage is actually uphill from the property, and seems to drain the 40 acres of swamp/woods behind us more than our spaces.  That swamp is presently feeding a clear stream diagonally across these 4 acres, mostly the back lawns, but also the west truck gardens, berries and a corner of the orchard.  (Note to self: orchard chickens do not swim well, and complain bitterly about soggy ground.)

The six year old neighbor is delighted because all that water returning means he can spend the day paddling the canoe across it.  Usually that is only for a couple weeks in spring when the ground has not unfrozen enough the absorb warm rains.  Then the canoe gets put away for lake use fishing in August.  Not this year! 

We've had way more rain than usual, and it has often been hard rains, instead of the farmers' delightful drizzle.  Last night it was 2" in about an hour and a half.  And the ground was already saturated from rains we have been having every couple of days since February.

Maybe they should have ducks instead of chickens?  And maybe grow rice instead of greens.....

She Said It...

Deb Rivel, board member of The Alex Foundation, quoted in Dr. Pepperberg's book, Alex & Me:

"Alex taught me the meaning of oneness. What I learned from him also supported what I always have known to be true: that there is just one Creation, one Nature, one good, full, complete Idea, made up of individuals of all shapes and designs, all expressing their oneness with one God. We are not different because we look different, but we all reflect the eternal beauty and intelligence of one Creation in our own peculiar way. It's what makes up the whole -- this textured fabric of thought and existence -- and knowing Alex has underscored to me how much the same we really are."

Right on.

Blast from the Past?

Yesterday I cleaned the oven. For the first time in ... decades.

No, really, apart from wiping down the shelves and door window, I have not cleaned an oven in over 30 years. We built our house in 1976, including a self-cleaning oven of the 'continuous' sort -- which meant you didn't have to use oven cleansers or the fume inducing self-clean cycle. Just keep the window clean. Then, we moved to Michigan, first to apartment with gas oven, then to apartment with brand new self-cleaning (which again, I never initiated, not being able to handle the fumes of super heated oven coating).

So having to get down on my knees and try to remember even how to go about reaching all the parts was a challenge. Found a nice, non-smelly oven cleaner (Easy Off low odor) that really does the job! And on a cold oven, so not even any hot oven fumes. Looks pretty good for a 40 year old piece of equipment, if I do say so myself...
Of course, I'm 'toast' today. This morning was so stiff I could barely move, and complaining and whiny with pain and sheer exhaustion. Couldn't figure it out. Then remembered all that time clambering into the innards, on my hands and knees, no less!

Well, no wonder I'm stiff and cranky, LOL. But maybe this will help loosen me up? Hope so, since we are continuing to live here, and I will probably need to clean it in the future..... Sigh.

Every day I'm finding new reasons to justify hiring housekeepers. Never could understand the need when I was younger....

Meanwhile, it is Spring! See? Enid's Jack-in-the-Pulpit spikes coming up:
And those little green leaves? Those are wild geranium, which I rescued from muddy tracter track and stuck in the basket with the Jacks. Next to bloom after the Spring Beauties and rue anemone, it will keep blooming for a couple months -- sometimes all the way into Fall in the garden. They last the longest of the spring wildflowers.

Are we happy Winter is behind us??*

*Obviously a rhetorical question.

Did You know...

...that a woman opened the new age of communication in 1844?

Me, either. Seems that Samuel F. B. Morse, inventor of the telegraph, and his good friend, Henry L. Ellsworth (son of Chief Justice Oliver Ellsworth) had been trying since 1838 to get a $30,000 grant from congress to finance a trial telegraph line between Washington DC and Baltimore .

The bill eventually passed but not until the last five minutes of the 1843-44 session. Talk about a cliff hanger! Guess they didn't have money to invest in a good lobbyist...

Henry's seventeen year old daughter, Annie Ellsworth Smith, carried the news to Professor Morse the next morning, and he promised that she would send the first message. Imagine her dilemma! Her mother suggested the words from the Psalm, "What hath God wrought?" and history was made on May 23rd, in 1844.

"What hath God wrought? Well, he wrought a lot...in 1844!"*


* from the parody, 1844, by Chris Ruhe (? Can't find my copy of the words from 1967 or thereabouts. Anybody?)

Spring is Coming!

...although it can be a little difficult to tell, especially since today the weather is barely at freezing and producing snow/sleet/rain mix for the morning commute.

However last Sunday a week ago was just a lovely promise of spring day, sunshine gentle breezes and about 50 degrees. MIL had the excellent notion of checking out the displays inside Matthaei Botanic Gardens greenhouse.

Since it was the first truly warm day around here, we had to brave irritated geese littering the landscape because their nesting pond (just in front of the parking lot for the buildings) hadn't defrosted yet. There were more couples than there are nesting spots, so 'discussions' of possession were heated, and sometimes the outraged pairs will actually stand in the parking lot and accost cars. Maybe they think they are calling upon higher powers to oust the intruding geese?

This pond is about an acre, mostly in cattail swamp, with some goose nests so old that they are built up like swan platforms (maybe that's what they originally were, but have been used by geese the 11 years I've been watching) and pretty inviolate, once the pond melts. Each nesting pair seems to have 3-5 'helpers' who stand guard, and takes sides disputing territory right now! Can be earsplitting.

That day, they did not run at the cars or us, and we made it indoors unscathed. The warm weather made us wish to wander the trails, but they were ankle deep in smushy mud from the thaw of about 6" of wet snow we'd had three days before. We relied on the green and blooms in the display house to add spring color to the day. Very nurturing!

Here are a few samples:


In the tropical room the orchid display was almost done, but these fairy orchids had VERY long fronds... Camera was supposed to focus on them, not the sausage tree fruit hanging in the background!


Some of the enthusiastic tulips (and a cabbage or two) at the entrance


Spring planting in the temperate climate room


Amaryllis in the temperate room, with sun shining through...


A velvet throat...


Part of an instant garden display in the temperate room.

In addition to many acres of woods, streams, meadows and bogs, the botanic gardens have about 2 acres of glass succession houses from which they can pull assorted potted flowering plants and set them close together so that it looks like all these plants were always growing together.

You can't see the pots, and until you figure out the deception, the heart just drops out of your gardening dreams, thinking there's no way you could ever achieve such a crush of beauty.

Now, I have to admit that both of us did momentarily wish for such a situation, where we had four green houses to feed lovelies into one display house....but we recovered quickly from that delusion. We figured up how many volunteers actually staff this place and decided we didn't want to work quite that hard, LOL.

Happy spring!