(no subject)

I took a walk today. I inspected the gourds, which are doing nicely. They're not *done* drying out, but they're sort of hard and a lot lighter than they were when they were fresh. (The gourds have been sitting on a stump all winter long, out in the fresh air and sunshine. This is as per the directions for birdhouse gourds.) I thought about straightening up the woodpile but didn't feel sufficiently motivated on that front even though it's something of a late-winter clusterfuck. I'll get it done this spring -- I always do. I also checked on my trees. These would be my small, baby trees. The beech trees are in good shape as are the metasequoias. The bald cypress trees look kind of worse for wear, but they were late getting fenced and the end-of-summer growth they made didn't have time to harden off before winter hit. I have faith, though, that they'll leaf out okay come spring.

The ground is still mostly frozen. Since a lot of where I live is swampy, the ground heaves pretty badly from the frost. It's all lumpy and uneven. On days like today, when it's not super cold, the ground creaks when I walk on it. It sounds like ice cubes sound when you drop them into a glass of water... not the plopping noise, but the fracturing noise after that. Some winters, if there's an unseasonably warm day late in the winter, the lake creaks and sings like a whale -- same thing, only on a bigger scale. Ice is actually pretty noisy stuff.

There's not much out because it's not even close to spring here yet. I saw two skunk cabbage in bloom. This is early, even for them.