A bigleaf maple bud bursts, revealing tiny flowers.

All the slowly moving engines of life are humming, whirring to life, putting gears in motion and bathing the world in the perfection of a thousand lifetimes’ iteration on beauty. Everywhere I look, flowers are peeking up from the dirt, glowing from high branches, staring me right in the eye. The air is heady with the excess of sun-drunk flora.

The ornamental cherry started blooming two or three days ago.

An early camellia blossom is luminous on the bush.

The first of the peach buds are revealing their beauty to the world.

Our new Black Australorp Rooster.

We’ve been very happy with the Black Australorp hens that we acquired a couple months ago, so when our neighbor offered us his Black Australorp Rooster as breeding stock we took him up on the offer. For his first day with our flock, we fenced him off from the other chickens in the yard and let them decide (with protective contact) what they thought of him.

Only Françuave Pierre, our foppish Hamburg rooster, took any objection to the newcomer. The hens investigated the interloper, and the other roosters seemed entirely uninterested. We’ll see whether Pierre’s temper has cooled towards him after another day or two of exposure.

Aine is proud of helping us plant the raspberries.

As we plant the crops — raspberries, asparagus, rhubarb, and various annuals, Aine has joined us and assists as best she’s able. The utility of her help has varied, but she’s always entertaining. She enjoys crawling and walking the paths adjacent to the plantings, and carried (with some care) asparagus root crowns from their bucket to Maia, who was planting them. Most of the time, just sifting dirt is good farming fun.

I’m pleased to report the sun helped our friends out today. All four hives flew, and quite a few ladies vacationed in the cherry plum tree. The tree positively buzzed! Also spotted: bees in dandelion and Indian Plum.

In other bee news: we got mason bees! Stay tuned for details.

Honeybee on a cherry plum blossom. One of many.