A cold rain is falling on Pleasant Places, and I am trying to remember which poet it was that wrote "April is the cruelest month..." I should know that. After all, I was an English major, but that was years ago. Anyway, there is a frost warning tonight and I fear for my tomatoes. Surely it won't be cold enough to hurt the tiny baby peaches. I am so looking forward to those peaches.
Cold rain or no, I took a few minutes to walk through the woods today. "Checking the fence" I told myself, which is absolutely unnecessary as there is nothing in the pasture at the moment that requires a fence. Dutifully, I removed sticks and pulled a few encroaching vines, but mostly I looked at the wealth of wildflowers that grow on our wooded slopes: mayapple, solomons seal-real and false, many kinds of trillium, toadshade-which is blooming now, ladyslipper (I think, but it isn't blooming yet), some kind of lily with strappy foliage. and on down into the fields I find violets, buttercups, wild strawberry and barren strawberry and more. All poised to start the spring show...if only this cold rain will let up and the sun will come out again.
Sunday we finished fixing the barn so the chickens can't get in and roost in the rafters. They make such a mess below and they do have their own house after all. The night we finished I stayed down there awhile and watched some of them determinedly inspect every square inch of our work trying to find a weak spot. My persistence gave out before theirs and I went to the house before they went to roost. Today when I went down two hens were in there. One sat on a bale of hay where they like to lay and one perched on the top of the stall. I ran them out and walked around yet again looking for their way in. I plugged a few places under walls, and then took my fence walk and when I got back...there she was again, sitting smugly on her nest. I think that hens are a great deal more intelligent than we have been lead to believe.

Spring Break...
And the gardening season has started in earnest. Mother Nature is apologizing for that long, cold winter with one of those all-at-once, exuberant springs. It feels like if I blink I miss something blooming or leafing or out. Almost all the trees have tiny, bright green leaves now, and in the garden the lettuce and spinach has pretty much just jumped out of the ground this week. We even ate a little of it and some radishes and arugula this week. Tastes like spring. I am so convinced it is really and truly spring that I went ahead and put out the tomatoes and peppers and planted the corn and beans.
But I almost forgot the biggest news...the chicks arrived Monday. Twenty six little peeps. Layers in waiting. I picked them up at the Post Office Monday morning. They spent the first few days inside in a box, but today I put them out in the brooder in the garden. They seemed happy with the arrangement, though it is hard to regulate the temperature. On warm sunny days like today it can get too hot in there and I spent a lot of today trying out various propping and shading arrangements.