Spring is Sneaking in Early

There’ll probably still be some freezes, rain, and probably slush, but the trees, flowers, and birds have all decided it’s spring, and who am I to argue. It’s not a great sign for our climate, but it is pretty beautiful.

My Anna’s hummingbird has little ones on the way. She made her nest right by the path in the garden, and she scolds me when I’m late bringing out fresh nectar. I always have a single Anna’s hummingbird each winter who camps out by the feeder and refuses to share, because they’re cranky little buttheads.
Primroses on the porch
Hellebore in the front garden

My silly little mama hens are also very certain that it’s time for chicks. To be fair, their instincts are generally not to be trusted. I’ve had some of my stubbornest girls go broody while it was actively snowing and the pond was frozen several inches deep, but I actually think they’re not entirely delusional this time. It’s probably also the last chance to get a clutch of chicks from Lapis, the matriarch of both my flocks, so I’m gonna see what they can do.

Lapis’s health is still good, but I’ve sent my roos and some of their ladies off to stay with a friend outside the city, and she’ll be staying with me for life. She can keep on raising babies when I bring home hatching eggs for her, so she’ll be quite happy, but she won’t have a boy around to fertilize hers for the foreseeable future.

The last year has been pretty much nothing but huge changes, and a lot of it has been incredibly hard, but I’m so grateful to be where I am right now.

Tiny Art

I picked up a cute little sketch pad yesterday and have been filling it with drawings of weird little critters.

A pair of starlings
A blue ringed octopus
A black widow with her egg sac and two spiderlings
She’s not a widow, but my little cupboard spider and her children were very helpful models for this one.

Rowan Crosses

Rowan berries
A rowan tree

I’ve been looking for a rowan tree for a little while. They’re not uncommon in landscaping and parks. There’s a species or two that are native to my part of the US, and also some that were brought here from Europe. They have flashy orange berries and distinctive leaves, so they’re fairly easy to spot.

But of course, as soon as I actually wanted to find one, I couldn’t remember any of the specific places I’d seen them growing. I’ve been keeping an eye out everywhere I go for a few weeks, but I didn’t get lucky until today. An unexpected errand took me by a park with multiple rowan trees displaying their pretty berries.

A rowan-wood cross woven with red yarn and topped with orange rowan berries.

And this is what I wanted to make. It’s an old protective charm made from crossed rowan twigs, woven together with red thread or yarn. The berries are often included, too, like I did here.

I didn’t just walk up and snap some bits off a tree, of course. I spent some time there, cleaned up some trash, removed some pests that were damaging the leaves, and gave the tree some water. I collected a handful of berries off the ground, plucked a few that were ripe and ready to fall off, and took a short branch that needed pruning.

When I got home, I spent a very cozy and peaceful evening making a few of these. I’ve never made them myself, so it took some practice. I’ve shared my favorite here, but they’ll all find places around the house or become gifts.

Lots of Growth

A green sweat bee in one of my dahlias

I’m still working on getting the house in order. The garden has been allowed to run entirely wild, and seems overall pleased to do so. I have to push through a mini jungle to go out and feed the chickens every day, but it’s pretty cool seeing what thrives out there even when I’m not very attentive.

Some blueberries from the front garden

Blue Death Feigning Beetle

A death feigning beetle sketched in black ink and gray markers

I got some of these guys a while back. They’re impressively low maintenance and entertaining pets, as insects go. As their name implies, they immediately give up and pretend to be dead when disturbed. I generally avoid triggering it, although unlike some other species it doesn’t seem to be a particularly taxing experience for them. One of them was kind enough to pose for a reference pic.

When they’re not pulling their little “woe is me, for I have perished” act, they just trundle around in their sandy habitat, irritate each other with extremely low-speed collisions, and munch on whatever organic matter has been presented to them that week. They’re scavengers, so they’re not picky.

I aspire to be this chill about dealing with things that bug me, since I know I’ll never be truly unbothered. Just corpsing it up and waiting for the source of irritation to get bored and wander away is probably a solid approach in a lot of situations, though.

Cleaning Progress Shown in the Growing Consternation of my Dogs

I started by destroying their primary sanctuary (organizing the bedroom, washing all the bedding including their personal special comforter, and sweeping.)
I moved on to sorting the many boxes and items of furniture that had taken up residence in the living room, forcing Toci to make a protective fort on the couch so she could keep an eye on me. Buddy simply fled.
She tried to convince me to stay in bed by being extra adorable the next morning, but I was determined to ruin her day and would not be stopped.
Reaching new heights of cruelty, I cleared the guest room of several years of built up detritus, made the bed with an extra soft new blanket, and then denied them and their grubby little paws access to it.
It has been a no good, terrible, super shitty week to be a small angry dog.

My back hurts a bit, and I’m tired, and the work isn’t done, but I’ve made a lot of progress pulling my physical space into order. I already struggle with focus, and having a chaotic environment has always made it worse. Unfortunately, I simply haven’t had it in me to do more than the bare minimum to keep myself, my spouse, and the animals alive for quite a while. Everything else just got shoved into a doom box, pile, or entire room.

That went for a lot of mental stuff, too. Sorting out the space seems to be helping a bit with that, and hopefully it’ll get easier. I haven’t had a lot of thoughts that are easily organized to share here, but this is what I’m up to.

Odds and Ends

Pen and ink sketch of a very silly little white cockerel
Freshly picked blue raspberries (yes, that’s a real fruit)

I got to harvest the first blue raspberries from the plant I got several years back, and they’re a delight. It’s an old variety that can’t be sold in stores, because they bruise and go over-ripe far too quickly to survive shipping. Whether or not the flavoring in candies and drinks is actually based on the fruit is apparently up for debate, but having tasted them now I can easily believe that it was. They’re less tart than a regular raspberry, and they do have their own unique flavor, although it’s hard to pin down.

They do kind of just taste a bit blue, in the same way that blueberries do. That’s not as silly as it sounds, since the pigments that create the blue color in the skin of blueberries also contribute to their flavor, and they’re present in these raspberries as well.