Mother’s Day

I hope everyone had a nice Mother’s Day–or, at least, survived it. Mother’s Day can be a wonderful day for those who have close families, but I always think of those who struggle with this Day because they don’t have good mothers, they can’t have children, or they have lost a child. For many, this is a very difficult day.

I spent the morning on Mother’s Day cleaning out the chicken coop. This involves using a hoe, rake, and shovel to drag out the poop and dirty straw and replace it with cleaner straw. Old chicken poop gets packed down hard like cement which actually helps provide insulation in the winter but it’s rather difficult to get off the floor of the coop. I don’t remove all of it–just the parts where it’s building up. Of course, some of the poop is fresher, and that’s heavy too. When I get the poop and dirty straw out of the coop, EJ takes it for his garden.

After I finished working in the coop, I took a shower because it’s a very dirty job. Then I did laundry. The first load I hung out on the clothesline to dry, but the sky kept threatening rain so I dried the rest of the clothes in the drier.

I worked in my flower and herb gardens for a bit, while EJ worked in his vegetable garden but then he wanted to stop at a hardware store to buy something for a project in his vegetable garden so I went along with him. We stopped at several different hardware stores but they were all closed–maybe for Mother’s Day? That was a bummer, but our trip wasn’t wasted because we dropped some stuff off at the recycling place and then went to the farm store for poultry feed and wild bird seed. The wild birds don’t actually need us to feed them at this time of year, but we really enjoy attracting the birds. In the Spring, we get birds returning to the area after spending the winter in the south. We’ve been getting a lot of Rose-breasted Grosbeaks at our feeder. A couple of days ago the Baltimore Orioles arrived back so I put out grape jelly for them to enjoy. Bluebirds don’t eat from our feeders but they have been busy nesting in the houses we have put up for them. Oh! Just now I saw an Indigo Bunting in the flower garden! Spring is such an exciting time of year.

When we got home, EJ carried the 40 lbs bags of poultry feed to the coop and I poured them into the storage bin. I was really tired by the end of the day and my body ached. Working hard might not seem like much of a Mother’s Day celebration, but I really enjoy working around our beautiful Enchanted Forest.

Today EJ and I continued working in our gardens. We also worked for a while organizing the garage. After lunch I put the big flattened bowl I used for a bird bath out on the large boulders and shortly afterwards saw a bird taking a bath in it. I also hung up a hanging bowl filled with damp sand for the butterflies and bees to drink from. EJ and I took some of the house plants out on the deck for the summer, although it might be a tiny bit early for that. After EJ went to work, I repotted my aloe plant. Although I tried to be careful, dirt got on the floor so I ended up vacuuming the house.

Over the weekend, there was a huge solar storm with spectacular Northern Lights. We went out to look at them on Friday but it was cloudy and rainy so we couldn’t see anything. Saturday night was clear so we went out again, but we didn’t see anything. We both were tired and really wanted to go to bed, but we also didn’t want to miss anything. So I texted JJ, who is working on a bulk carrier on the Great Lakes, and asked him to text me if he saw any. About midnight he texted me that he saw the Northern Lights so I woke EJ and we went outside for a while…but we still didn’tsee anything. I had thought that we’d see MORE celestial events when we moved north, especially since we live on a HILL. However, we actually see fewer because we are surrounded by forests and hills that block the view of the horizon. We only see things (like meteorite showers) that are directly overhead. We tried multiple times to drive to a place where we’d have a clearer view–like on the shores of a lake. But we haven’t been able to find a good spot so we finally gave up. We gave up Saturday night also and went back to bed. JJ sent us a couple photos of the Northern Lights that he took from his ship. There’s nothing blocking his view when he’s out sailing on the Great Lakes. Here’s one of the photos he sent: