A Running Collection

The sky stays baby blue. The breeze brushes back our hair just so. The plants soak in sun and warmth. The bees suck water from little puddles in the tops of lids and water caught at the edge of faucets.  The light, the warmth, the droplets of water. It is all just so. . .  Mother's Day arrives. It must be planned at peak season for all things that give birth. Five baby chicks hatch. The mother hen keeps them under her wing. We get just a peek. Then there are four eggs. She doesn't want them. It was Mother's Day, I sat in vigil. Peeling back pieces of egg shell pulling out babies that needed warmth I couldn't give and hoping to figure out how to make the temperature just so.  We were running a risk. We couldn't figure out how to get unhatched eggs with live babies out of their eggs the same way a mother hen does it, so we just stayed with them and watched and prayed. It has been three days and they are happy and fine and chirp through the day and the nig...

 Did you know that carrots are beautiful on top? Their greens are bright and full. The green part isn't  tasty. The chickens like them. Did you know that bees guard their hive at night. Not just one or two. They create a wall. A barrier with their bodies. And they have a sort of runway at the entrance to the hive. We sit and watch them pass messages, circle this way and that and then take off. It is brilliant, this bee keeping business. Did you know that we are crazy about wild animals, tame animals, baby animals, dead animals? We are. George was helping a friend today and they (from a safe distance) killed a massive cotton mouth snake. They brought it home for the children to see and got to work on some fencing. The snake didn't get buried, but it moved. . . . We were a little concerned until I walked to the road and a huge red shouldered hawk flew up right from the spot where the snake was. It was eating it for dinner, thus dragging it around the yard a bit. ...