Spring has sprung

When I was little, my mom used to recite this poem every spring:

Spring has sprung

The grass is riz’

I wonder where the flowers is?

I think of that every spring when my favorite flower, the daffodil, appears. A fragile, short-lived flower, I like daffodils because they are pretty, and they sprout up unexpectedly in unforeseen places to announce the coming of spring. Also, their timing correlated with the last weeks before my birthday. With global warming, though, they now appear much earlier. I was out at the new property yesterday, and saw some at the edge of our new gravel driveway. A friend of ours pointed out that in many places, the presence of daffodils gives archaeological clues to former dwelling places used by the pioneers. They planted daffodils (as well as other flowers) around their homesteads, and the daffodils remain- in part, because they are in hiding eleven months out of the year, but also because the bulbs are poisonous (or at least not tasty) to animals that might otherwise eat them.

But other things are starting to “spring” back to life, as well. Our experimental winter wheat has little heads on it, which is very exciting. I still don’t know how much we’ll get, but it’ll be fun to see. Our garlic has resumed growth as well. As a result, today was the first day of real farming for the new year. Emily and Allison (another buddy of ours) went out to the original farm to weed and fertilize the garlic. While she was out there, she also sprayed fish emulsion (another fertilizer) on our fruit trees. They have buds, and are soon to explode with growth. Hmm, I guess it’s time for me to start pruning. I LOVE pruning.