tending to life

Small joys proliferate.

The first beans pushed their way up through the ground and our chickens laid their first eggs on Wednesday morning.  Gideon reached his hand under the warm hens and pulled back treasure: two brown eggs and one white.  

Our blackish hens are a rare breed which lay pale green eggs.  They are also the most sensitive to their environment which is probably why they haven't laid any eggs yet since they've been at our place.

The other joy we celebrate is that nearly all the trees now have leaves.  The cherry blossoms are at their finest and are literally humming with the hosts of bees collecting nectar.  

The thing about spring on the Prairies is that once it begins, it begins with vigour.  There's a robust awakening.  You can almost hear the earth shout, "Ready or not, here I come!"  But, of course, everyone is beyond ready.  They have been waiting and waiting, watching for just the right time to till the ground, waiting for just the right time to put the crop in.  Waiting for the time to hang-up their jackets and stride out the door with short sleeves, rejoicing.  

I've been walking past the field which has been planted with potatoes.  So far, nothing has come up.  It has been one week since I watched our neighbour make perfectly straight furrows, stopping at the edge of the field to be eat the warm dinner his wife brought.  Flocks of seagulls hovered as they feasted on the abundance of worms and insects.  

The rows are, to me, a call to prayer.  This morning as I ran past them, I marvelled at the even rows, the satisfying heaps of dirt, the black-black of the soil.  I don't want to miss the first signs of green as they emerge from the ground even though we don't really eat many potatoes anymore.  They used to be a staple in our house as I was growing up.  We didn't plant fields of them like some of our relatives did -- and still do --  but we grew rows of them in the garden.  I remember digging up potato hills and counting how many potatoes we could get from one plant, counting our blessings, one by one into the basket.  My Mom peeled and boiled and sometimes mashed those fresh potatoes nearly daily in the summer.  My Mom even won a prize at the church picnic decades ago for her skill at peeling the potato in the least amount of time with the thinnest, longest spiral of peel.  How have I forgotten these gems?...  When those first spuds are ready for digging in several weeks, guess what we'll be eating?   I mean, not the ones from our neighbour's field, but the Deep Red Norlands we planted next to the beans in our own garden...

In the meantime, we watch and wait.