4.4.14 Almost Every Year

      A few years back, what with kids moved out and all, I began having the chance to notice when, in Springtime and Fall, we would go for too long without rain, and plants would begin to do badly and die. Before that, I just always assumed that watering took place when everything warmed up, summer time and all. Droughts aside.
       Today I began noticing the soil, the plants, picked up pinches and rubbed them between my fingers. Got out the hoses now that snow is all but gone, to preempt some of my favorite, yet well mulched, hostas from biting the dust, etc.
      But as the afternoon wore on, the skies went from a bit dark, not uncommon here in spring, to darker, and finally sprinkling began....blessed rain, falling and every plant drinking a bit.
       The sound I now hear on the road far out front is an intermittent car going by, the wheels whirring that car-on-wet-country-road sound, so blessed here, when drought is harming so many many places.
      I am thinking of the Ruffed Grouse out in the brush, with their one beautiful striped baby underwing,
        of the courting birds going about gathering materials, now that things are more worked out as to who is with who, to select areas and build nests.
         Almost every year, there is a Red Wing Blackbird male who tries tries to talk his mate into nesting in a birdhouse attached to our house, calling and calling, while she persistently calls back, cajoling him, sweetening him, patiently waiting him out, til, finally, he gives in, and goes to the site she has selected, and settles down to this year's family life once again.