Is it spring yet? No, no, it’s not.

The Chickens: Put a dowel in there, and now they’re working on figuring that out. Dotty (the Ameraucana) towers over the other girls, but Ethel (the Australorp) is clearly catching up. The other girls are just trying not to get in the way. Margaret (the Wyandotte) is my current favorite; she stands by the front of the cage and stares at me when I’m down there.

The Bees: No launches from the mason bee tubes. My curiosity got the better of me, and I slit open a tube to see if there was actually anything in there. I’d read that the bust out at 57 degrees, and we’ve done better than that for a week or more. Looks like there are, indeed, bee-stuffed cocoons in there. Whatever. I’m far too emotionally invested in those insects than is healthy. How about this for odd? Some folks recommend that you slit open the tubes in the fall and wash the cocoons in a weak bleach solution. Seems that helps to control the mites. Huh.

The Garden: Everything’s just perched to bust forth. I’ve been working on transplanting those things that I’ve generally walked past and muttered “dammit” about for a couple of years now. There’s some nice sword ferns wedged in stupid places. I’m moving those under the cedar in back. I moved a dicentra there, too. It was in the sun. There were some primo Asian poppies wedged under a tree or some stupid thing. Dammit. The Asian pear is just dying to bloom. I wish it luck. Lots of things popping out in the greenhouse. The asclepias speciosa finally sprouted.

There’s so much to know, and I’m terminally ignorant.

Whatever happened to Carl Elliot? Carl isn’t ignorant.

My fuzzy kiwi, I swear to god, has remained two feet tall since I planted it a couple of YEARS ago. It’s still alive. It puts out a couple of leaves and then… just… goes dormant. I’m not really into that.