Winter Fireflies, Sunshine and Life on the Farm

And just like that, it's spring. The birds we so recently watched soaring south are soaring north. The maple sap is running or finishing up. Frogs and salamanders moved to the vernal pools in the first warm rains and I hear the frog songs as I type. Winter Fireflies are basking on the warmed south side of trees and we are savoring every last delicious minute of the season of rebirth.

Ellychnia corrusca are pretty fascinating fireflies. You must read about them; they will make your life richer if you know them and it sure makes for a fun end of winter scavenger hunt. So far we've seen them on 10 species of trees at Mohican State Park/Forest: black oak, white oak, pignut hickory, sugar maple, black cherry, red elm, red oak, American beech, tulip tree, Pinus sp.

The raccoons and deer are moving about, I assume, grateful for the retreat of the deep snow that blanketed the Earth for quite some time this winter. We loved watching the fluffy white stuff fall and we loved watching it melt and smell the thawing earth. 

A Gray Catbird spent the winter here up until the day before the last big snow storm when the food ran out. Poor timing isn't it? You know what that means....yep, planting more, more, more!

I'm spending time putting thoughts on paper and then the computer and Steve made me a repurposed table to handle my chaos. I love it. Garage sale legs and an old bulb crate we used for winter produce came together just right. There is so much stuff already in existence, isn't there? A little creativity is all that's needed...

Our little Oreo (aka Wuk) helps me on occasion...

and celebrated with me on my first deer shed. 

Steve and I handled cat chaos with cat gates and now we can breathe again and the oppressed cat (Minnie Pearl) eats and drinks without fear. Can you hear the long exhale? It's been rouuuuggghhhhhh.

Bird houses didn't work well here so we finally threw the towel in and that's also a great, great relief. (Sometimes, we just have to quit fighting a path that isn't changing or improving.) We will continue, as always, to promote snags and natural tree holes.

Woodland sedges are reunited with our little woodland and it made us so happy to have our hands back in the soil, to enrich a beat up fence row and to accept the generosity of these plants to grow.

Thanks to some coordination with a neighbor of ours, the road trash is picked up on our stretch for the time being. This is what Steve and I picked in a couple of hours! Hmmm. 

The dove covey makes us smile every single time. Flighty birds, they are and we get it. They've spent a large portion of this winter here and we are going to miss them when we stop feeding the birds this spring, but we need the birds to disperse for their own health. We also feel conflicted about the bird seed bags (see above). What do you all do with them?

Richard Louv put into words what we feel when we are in the magic of the planet. That's who we are. The rest of it, who knows what that is. That's not our essence and what a gift to know it.

Soundtrack:

MILCK - Quiet

Joseph - White Flag