The sun finally came out today. As well it might, it being the end of May and therefore the day before SUMMER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I woke up at 5.30am because a) it was an amazing sunrise which my body obviously wanted me to see, and b) the virus that felled Himself and Queenie has morphed into the streaming nose bit, which is good because that means it's nearly over, and bad because I was sleeping with Aloysius Snuffelupagus last night.
No, I didn't know his name was Aloysius either. There you go. You never leave this blog without learning something useful.
I lasted until about 6.40am and then I had to get up to get away from the noise.
I banged the door on the way out of the bedroom just to drive the point home.
But it was worth the early start to sit on the deck and listen to the birds justa singin' their little hearts out. Susan Boyd my ass - I counted eleven different melodies, most of them coming from pretty drab little birds.
We have a lot of smallish, brownish type birds that I haven't nailed yet. As well as blue jays (but they don't sing, they scream), a pair of wood pigeons who sound like owls, a pair of robins nesting in a tree near the driveway, chick-a-dees, the woodpecker of course, and a bird that sounds like a blackbird but I don't know what it is here.
Today, Raven visited us. That's the first time I've seen him.
Raven is of course, very important in Aboriginal storytelling, and his role in stories is very ambiguous, so I don't know if Raven is good or bad.
Whatever Raven feels like being I think.
And Bunny was sitting in the gravel pile munching on dandelion flowers.
How do I get Bunny to sit in the lawn and do this....
I wish I had a million Bunnies.
I should just call what I do in the yard what it is and tell the world I'm a dandelion farmer.
Anyway, I can't type for much longer because my hands are sore from weeding. I spent all day on the flower beds and really you can't tell I did.
The problem is my response ability. It's not up to a Canadian summer yet.
In Ireland, around March, weeds start to poke their heads up, and you mutter, yes.... hmmmm... must weed that bed.... and eventually you either get it done bit by bit, or you are useless, and the weeds get big and then you have a problem.
In Canada, around the end of April, the ground is still frozen for the most part, and it's about minus 3 in the morning, so there's nothing to be done unless you get a great day. Then in May, you start getting everything ready (Irish style) ... buy seeds, plant seeds, water seeds, mow lawn, get compost, draw garden plan, browse stores which open on Mother's Day, etc.
Then it's late May and suddenly its plus 10 in the morning and there are a gazillion fucking weeds where there was nothing but mulch the day before.
So instead of the nice day planting you had planned you spend the day communing with the fecundity, wondering if this is a plant or a weed.
Thankfully, the plants are similar enough so that I know what is a weed and what is a plant, but they come up INTERTWINED...
Anyways, because of the early start, quite a bit of the list got done. Himself got up and even though he is still ill did his best to help out with the heavy stuff.
So the beds are done, the pruning is done... I made one serious error so one of my plants look like it shaved its head with a lawnmower... the path to the front door is freshly gravelled, the lawn is mowed, (we only have one million dandelions now), the whipper snipping done.
Himself even tried to do some transplanting in the greenhouse, but it appears to have been taken over by hordes of angry biting ants. Judging by the bites on his feet.
Those of you who know me know that several years ago, I had an extraordinarily bad night one night. It involved a tent, a carpark, a horde of biting ants, a one horse town in central Venezuela, and a carload of copulating gauchos. It was traumatic. Needless to say I won't be going in the greenhouse until they've been eliminated.
Getting places.
Finally.
Of course, after a day of sunshine, there will be one million more weeds tomorrow.
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