“In the early dangerous spring I wander….”
That line from a poem I wrote in younger years while strolling in the evenings on the Vineyard is about the very unsettledness of spring- the desire to be out while yet it’s still dark- the sudden dying off of all kinds of household indigenes that just made it through the winter, the peril of baby life emerging in a savage natural world. Plans of all sorts abandoned unfulfilled in past seasons are renewing themselves at pace with the increasing light, only to be frustrated with random reversals to cold days or still-too-brown-sorrounds-malaise or ambushing illness- as was the case in April with the four-week earache. Not much artwork got done!- let alone the posts I wanted to put here.

So, the mornings of April became all about the seedlings. Thankfully the scheduling they require kept us on track for garden activity at least. We have to record so many things!- dates, moon phases, temperatures, ideas, who’s up and who were obvious duds, with text and images, photos and drawings. Rainy Spring Mornings- light rain, lovely for walking around in while contemplating ways to make the whole work the way I want it to. We need it badly, and the seedlings are all put out to it. I’ve long felt that plants do so much better after they’ve been rainwatered than from almost anything else. Well- fish emulsion is good too.

Each year now I end up having to do new garden charts even though every time I do one it’s with total faith that I won’t have to do them again, and that an overlay will suffice. But somehow each year things have changed enough that that won’t do. Here’s this year’s, accommodating for the new windows and where the greenhouse addition will be. So- some areas are still in pencil.

It will have to be unfinished for awhile until everything’s finalised, but- that’s alright- it can be a work-in-progress through the season. Here’s a completed one from 2021.

I love garden charts! And watercolor pencils are great to do them with. Do I use them (the charts) as much as I should? Ummmm- somehow each spring everything seems so new whether or not it a really is that I forget to check for where things are- which is the whole point of a garden chart- so unfortunately, we’ve lost a thing or two just to unawareness.

The evenings though belong to the owl children. Here they are- Archimedes, named actually for the Wart’s owl in “The Once and Future King”, and Hypatia, named for – Hypatia! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypatia. Of course we’re operating under the assumption that one is a boy and one a girl, which even if not, will definitely apply to the parent. I like to draw as many things as I can, but photos are sometimes the only option.

After what I thought was a non-starter year for getting any owl babies, it turned out to be the spring of springs for wild animal families! And that’s our next post’s subject.