Putter

It rained overnight. Early this morning, it's lightly misting. I leave the deck door slightly ajar so the Pooch can come in and out at will. I fix my breakfast and offer Pucci bacon ends and $1.00 a can wet cat food. He's scattered his dry cat food over the kitchen floor. He decides to eat last night's leftover, something too gross for me to describe in my pre-lunch mode. I'm scheduling a morning in which I can putter.

I step out on the deck before I go upstairs to change into work clothing. The sky is totally overcast but the mist has subsided. It's delightfully cool. Pairs of geese fly overhead honking. An anonymous bird is singing a song that translates to you're a pervert ( I swear that's what it sounded like) or a bird version of tweet, tweet, tweet. Mother Earth is fully in bloom. My brain functions around an ongoing garden plan. It's the part right next to what's there to eat? and I'm horny. The past few warm, sunny days has everyone in the area working the fields. Yesterday, I planted the remaining crops except corn and carrots. I'll wait until more farmers in the area are planting field corn. The conditions are perfect for sowing tiny carrot seeds in moist warm soil. I'd also reminded myself that transplanting cabbages is ideal in rainy cool weather.

It's cool enough for a denim jacket. I grab a hoe, garden rake and seeds and walk to the far end of the front field. There's space next to the wax beans. Overnight something has dug around the wood stake marking the end of the bean row. Seeds are scattered about. Varmint alert, priority one. I jump in the pick up and drive to the neighbors to get my live trap. Then I open the barn and get all the folk art crows and other strange animals I've created over the winters, place them in the truck bed and scatter crow magnums ( 36" high crows) uncommon crows(normal size birds), Heckle and Jeckle type crows and the live trap next to the spot where I originally discovered the damage.

With the garden protected my last task is to aim the spot lights on the barn toward the garden. Then I remember, I'd left the deck door open. I imagine a raccoon at the cat's dry food dish and walk back to the house. The Pooch is happily munching on a field mouse.

I guess field mice have better flavor than the $1.00 a can cat food. I go back to the garden knowing that it could pour at any moment which is good for the baby cabbages I'm digging up and ripping apart. When I have set twenty five new pine stakes next to each plant to thwart the moles that tunnel under my garden, I wonder if I should water the new transplants or wait until it rains. If I wait, it won't rain. I haul four watering cans out to the vegetable plots and carefully make a pool around each transplant. If I carefully pack soil around the new plants, there will still be air pockets. The water helps to settle the plants and ease the shock they experience. A few fall over from fright. The Pooch walks down the lane toward the river, glancing back at me standing and counting cabbage plants. It's as if he's asking, "Is it OK Dad? Can I go down to the river? Please." Before lunch I take a few shots of trees blooming. Here's one of my favorites.

I stop counting cabbages at 50. In the basement is a whole metal shelf of sauerkraut from 2006. What am I going to do with all this cabbage. I decide to make sausage and sauerkraut for lunch.