Happy May Day and Beltane blessings!

We've no livestock ro turn out to summer pasture, so our Beltane bonfire was subdued, but we did one. The winter Solstice greens by our stoop finally have been replaced with spring and summer flowers. As we broke winter's fallen branches and added them to the fire, we thought about the recent Minnesota Depaertment of Natural Resources request, that folks chip and/or compost, rather than burn, leaves and brush . We bet whoever wrote that didn't live where there's lots of older oak trees doing their self-shading routine. We pictured ourself trying to feed our dead oak branches "brush" into a chipper's chute and had a good laugh.

Later, while taking a look at our compost tumbler, we noticed a large pile of this spring's bear scat near the tumbler. It was full of the seeds of something, but we couldn't identify what, unless it was last autumn's blackberries. Two years ago the neighborhood bear tipped the tumbler over. This spring almost all that's still in it is now composted, more dirt like than garbage. Country living can get complicated. A bear-proof compost bin would have to be about as sturdy as a bear-proof chicken house, we imagine. Have you noticed how messy Mother Nature often is?

squirrels have been eating oriole's grape jelly

Photo by J. Harrington

No bluebirds in the bluebird house, but no one else is in it either. Still no orioles, hummingbirds, etc. The Better Half gave us an early birthday and/or Father's Day present, a "squirrel-proof" bird feeder to replace the one we lost a couple of years ago when one of the local whitetails got annoyed that it couldn't readily feed on the sunflower seeds and bent the hanger and smashed the feeder. It's been interesting watching the reaction of the birds to the "new? style feeder. Chickadees were the bravest in checking it out first, followed by goldfinches and, eventually, a female cardinal.

will a "squirrel-proof" feeder succeed?

Photo by J. Harrington

Tomorrow we'll add to the branch pile (it doesn't fit our idea of "brush") when we pick up some more of the winter's windfall branches. We'll also drag harrow the fresh collection of pocket gopher mounds and try to decide where to till for the three sisters garden we want to grow this summer.

May Day

Sara Teasdale - 1884-1933

A delicate fabric of bird song
  Floats in the air,
The smell of wet wild earth
  Is everywhere.

Red small leaves of the maple
  Are clenched like a hand,
Like girls at their first communion
  The pear trees stand.

Oh I must pass nothing by
  Without loving it much,
The raindrop try with my lips,
  The grass with my touch;

For how can I be sure
  I shall see again
The world on the first of May
  Shining after the rain?

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