Yesterday morning we saw a large porcupine wobbling slowly up the hill and across the road. Was it visiting the garden? Who knows… First I got excited because I thought that porcupines were related to hedgehogs, and hedgehogs are very good friends of the gardener because they eat slugs. It turns out that porcupines are not at all related to cute little hedgehogs, and what’s even worse — they are rodents!!!! Seriously, I don’t need more rodents in my zoo. Have I mentioned that the voles are already up and at ‘em? I just saw two peaking out from underneath the shed, looking like they’re in it to win it.
However, today’s trivial pursuit is not about the belligerent Rodentia Order. It is about all the things that have already started to grow. Unbelievable: only 3 days ago the garden was still completely covered with a pretty thick blanket of snow, and yesterday almost all of it had melted away. Not only that — the special Russian garlic (my dad found it for me somewhere) I planted in the fall is shooting through the mulch. You might not see it at first but keep looking: there are 4-5 little . . . CONTINUE READING → mid-March trivia
The fog was so thick this morning that you couldn’t see the lake from the window. On my morning walk-through, wrapped in a magic foggy mist, I noticed the first sunflower! — as if the sun made a cameo to make up for its absence. Cheered up, I performed a few sunflower salutations with my camera.
A new lily opened its petals in the fog but you can’t see it from everywhere under the yellow umbrellas of dill flowers that grew wide and tall around it in the last couple of days.
It rained and drizzled all morning and early afternoon, so Barbara and I used the rain break for a long-planned trip to Zema’s nursery in Stephentown — where I’ve never been before — to pick out some new plants. It has a pretty large selection, and I, as expected, had to see 
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