April 11, 2010

today
while walking around the farm doing the things i do, i began noticing the blooms…dandelion,
apple beach plum strawberry
henbit
oak
forsythia
maple is pretty much done wild violet which is one of my favorite flowers in a light steaked purple on white, and some have that pre washed jean blue look
our single and lonely red azalea
the columbine is almost ready to speak up purple and yellow and rose
there were leaves on the japanese red maple which unrolled from yesterdays buds and on canes there are the new raspberry leaves
and i saw one leafed grasses coming up in the paddock dirt
rye crabgrass then the two leaved seedlings of smartweed
and some sedges
and birds i saw birds i had not seen for quite some time like an osprey which floated over the fields in a lifting spiral before turning east and towards the marsh, as if it suddenly decided that that was where it was wanting to go all along.
there were sounds. mostly the traffic on route 49. the neighbor who mows his lawn each day sitting on his sears tractor. we call him mr. mower man. but he doesn’t know that. sometimes he mows at night in the blackness. perhaps he is escaping from his own darknesses. anyway its odd. ten oclock is too late to mow a lawn.
i saw louie standing four legged asleep snoring in the wind that pulled the cold spring air down from the north. before that he had made his way to the garden and rolled in the tilled soil. first he knelt down and fell to his left side and rubbed his side three times. then he got up and got down on his front knees and fell over to his right side and rubbed his right side three times. its always three times on each side. its always three. always. he never does it different. three. then he’s done
there were not many clouds today. maybe some i didn’t notice. i’m sure some skipped by me
the broccoli raab sprouted double heart shape leaves in the raised bed i made last week
the elm i planted two years ago in the main pasture is leafing out. it has survived its second winter here. one day it will shade horses on a hot day. its why i planted it. last year a swarm of honey bees rested on one of its lower branches before going off to wherever they decided to go. wherever you go that’s where you are. buddist bees.
mud is still in some places
next week the grass will need to be mowed


(note: while trying to write in this style, my computer fought me all the way by automatically capitalizing “i”, adding other capitals, punctuating, laying down squiggly green lines under phrases to tell me my grammar is wrong, and squiggly red lines to say im a bad speller… the computer doesn’t recognize creative expression and to make it do so everything has to be backspaced and retyped each time…sorta a scary thought, isn’t it.)