Category: How Things Grow

Takuma 拓真 is enjoying spring from the window. Is he a dog or is he a bear?

Spring comes slowly in the Pacific Northwest. The alders began to show hints of green weeks ago. Their leaves are just starting to unfurl. With spring inching along, the changes from one day to the next barely perceptible, spring is a relaxed meditation.

Fresh garlic is a wonder of early spring. If you don’t pull all your garlic out in the fall, you’ll get clumps of garlic which are great eaten fresh before they form bulbs.

The lovage is back up, something I celebrate each year. For a short time, it’s a treat to cook with.

This morning, after a string of sunny days, we had a gentle morning shower. Just a light sprinkle to freshen things up and leave the air sweet.

The pear blossoms are opening. These are modest flowers compared to the showy cherry blossoms. Camellias are flowering too.

The forest floor is a carpet of green. The sunshine and warmth have stirred the bleeding hearts and trilliums awake. I saw the first trillium of the season today.

And this splash of yellow on a log. Wow! Mushroom yellow? For some reason this fungus wants to be seen by all.

Spring is a riot of blossoms now. Plum trees and western skunk cabbage (Lysichiton americanus) compete to see who can fill the air with the most aroma. You can imagine which has the more powerful fragrance. According to Dave’s Botanary “Lysichiton is from the Greek lysis (loosening) and chiton (cloak); as the fruit ripens the spathe is removed from the spadix.”

I got the last of the seed potatoes into the ground, the last that I have hanging around that is. I will need to get more. I’ve got a vague notion of growing at least a thousand pounds of potatoes this year. The ducks aren’t sure I can do it, but they will give me a lot of help with my digging. I think ducks enjoy mud more than pigs.

The one place where the action is this time of year is the blooming cherry tree. It is where everyone gathers. Wasps, bees, flies, bumblebees, butterflies, and a zillion other little things with wings make it the busiest place in the garden. It would be easy to while away hours up in the blooming cherry tree, watching the constant flow of traffic.

One thing I noticed is that bees prefer cherry blossoms that are in the sunshine. Does the nectar flow more when the blossoms are warmed by the sun? That’s my hypothesis as to why the bees seem to like the sunny blossoms more, and why the cherry tree is where everyone gathers when the sun comes out.

Five days ago, the cherry blossoms were on the verge of opening. A few buds teased with slightly unfurled petals. Today, they are no longer teasing. Their petals are open wide, dancing in the spring breeze. I need to enjoy them today. Clouds and rain are forecast for tomorrow and the coming week. Sure, they are lovely underneath the clouds or in a shower, but not like they are up against a cobalt blue sky.

Such beauty calms the mind. There is plenty to worry about these days. It’s hard to believe that a virus, so small that 600 to 800 could line up on the width of a human hair, is powerful enough to bring societies around the world to their knees. A corona virus is 120 nanometers across. According to the National Nanotechnology Initiative a human hair is approximately 80,000- 100,000 nanometers wide. Something so minuscule is able to disrupt a human which is nearly two billion times as tall as it.

A corona virus may not be a living thing (Are Viruses Alive? – Scientific America), but it can still tell us the importance to enjoy them today, whatever them is. It’s also teaching us lessons on the need to pay attention to the tiniest of details, and the importance of having leaders who are truthful, pay attention to facts, and are concerned about the welfare of others.

The snow geese migration has started. The snow geese that winter here are on the move. I passed a flock of thousands of them on the way home from delivering tofu. They are on their way to their summer home on Wrangle Island in Russia in the Arctic Ocean, 2,400 miles away. The island hosts some 450,000 snow geese during the summer. There they breed and raise the next generation of snow geese.

Next November, the snow geese migration will reverse course and we’ll welcome thousands of snow geese as they fly in from the north.

Russian biologist, Vasiliy Baranyuk has studied the snow geese of Wrangel Island in Russia for forty years. He has followed them to their wintering ground as far as Nebraska.

Looking at their route does make me wonder how often they stop to sight see on the way north. The lucky thing about snow geese parents is they don’t have to worry about their children begging to stop because they have to go to the bathroom. That gentle rain that falls when a huge flock of snow geese fly overhead? It’s snow geese young that can’t hold it any longer.

A frosty March morning leads to a great discovery. I knew the ducks had to be laying eggs, but where? Their secret is no longer a puzzle. I’ve discovered where they are laying their eggs. Ducks are clever about hiding their nests. Fortunately, they aren’t into a brooding mood yet. This would be far too many ducklings to handle.

I flipped the calendar page from February to March and saw I had crocus last March. That stirred me to investigate if the crocus under the horse chestnut were up.



Up they are, loads of them.




Daffodils too. Every year I see new daffodils, and each year seeing the first ones open is as delightful as it was many years ago.




The rhubarb are popping up too. Here’s a good old friend, ever faithful, no matter how many times I eat it, spreading it’s new leaves, sending out thick stalks to feed me, though I doubt that is how rhubarb sees the situation. I’ve planted many rhubarb so no one rhubarb gets picked on by me too much.



Spring means it is time to thin out the bamboo. Fresh bamboo poles become poles to trellis beans. Little by little, my vegetable garden, shaggy from winter’s storms, will be tamed, though not too much. Nature prefers to be messy.