Toad on my toes

Toad on my foot

Toad on my toes

Swallow in the bird house                                                   

Great White runs from hose

12 hours drinking country air

12 hours to hoe rows

Toad on my toes

Stripe snake suns, a friendly sort

Newt the salamander not so

he’s built a couch

in the greenhouse

they’re here for good

I’m passing through

Toad on my foot

Toad on my toes.

The Tease

Temperatures down to five degrees, more with the wind. Yet there are small buds on trees throughout the yard, and the tangle of last summer's vines wait for a good trim. A fast snow whipped over Cahas Mountain Monday eve. The blanket covered fescue and timothy, and the anxious asparagus. 

This was but a hill, long ago a home for holsteins, but over six years we have planted yoshino cherries, apples, cypress, dogwood pink & white, the honeysuckle and wisteria.  And a south-faced garden with stone down the other side. (Cats roam there in January.)

More zeroes coming this week. The horse has blanket, two stalls and fresh hay.

We all wait as the days widen.

The fool's sky

The blue made me think of onion sets. It's almost time, and this 'round I'll probably return to Southern States, where they dollop out jokes along with the tiny bulbs.

It's a bit of a riddle as to why the sky invited the sun out today, as we've seen nothing but darkness and dank for a week. The January soil hasn't decided yet whether to thaw (don't!) in the 50 degrees (F) of this Sunday afternoon.  But light snow is forecast again in a few more evenings, and the horse asked if she could keep her blanket 'till March. Probably.

But I'm dreaming of onion sets today, yellows and reds, and also the spring greens that I'll set in the dark and pungent soil of the low garden in six weeks. 

We've been eating stews of thick sauce in a red pie pan, and aromatic soft breads with real butter. But on this sunny surprise of a day, it's the crunch tender and raw that I seek.

Southern sun

Christmas greenhouse, my husband will build it. And in the little house will be vegetables, herbs, flowers & shrubs, paints & an iPod, attempts at native plantings, and me.

Southern exposure, and traveling light on the top of this Blue Ridge foothill from west, east and north. 

Down a short hill, through Great White's yard, the little garden with slowly developing terraces. Everyone's tomatoes were terrible after the cold spring of a year soon to be gone, but the asparagus and peppers were lovely. And the grapes, luxuriant enough that this year I must design a rough arbor. 

First, the building project, then the dirt, real and imagined.