"To See a World in a Grain of Sand..."*

Well, the weather continues to vacillate. Last week went into the 80s, and this week has started with 29F overnight Monday and 25F Tuesday. Winds, rain, frost and blazing sun - April has had them all - even a couple of flurries around lunchtime Monday. Still the slow trudge of fence building has progressed in between bouts of planting, potting up, and trying to work in the broken greenhouse. The parts I need for it are no longer available, so I will have to fabricate them, but since it is partially functional, I am trying to hit the more time sensitive projects first.

Katie has been nursing an injured rooster, and trying to hatch some wren eggs from a nest that was abandoned after a raccoon found the mother. Nature is hard, and I don't always have great expectations for these things, but Katie has managed to save some cases that I thought were hopeless, so I will wait and see.

"It's not miracles that generate faith, but faith that generates miracles." ~ Dostoevsky

I finally got my peas and my cabbages in, a little late by the calendar, but about right by the signs. I don't necessarily follow all of the moon signs and such, though I do keep an eye on them. I have known folks who have sworn by such things. I once knew a fellow who wouldn't plant a so much as a fencepost unless the moon was in the right sign. And, to tell the truth it always seemed to work out for him. Come to think of it, I never really knew anyone who followed the signs that found they didn't work out. Really, the only folks who seem to object have not tried, or, like me, just can't always get it coordinated. I used to really think a great deal of the Biodynamic systems of Rudolf Steiner. Still do, I reckon, but I have always been spread too thin to really apply the principles properly. I do not believe enough effort has been made to explore these things, and - someday - I hope to scientifically trial them. Right now I just hope to get my 'taters in before it is too late.

Yet, there is a certain magic in a pea. That single little, dried up, wrinkly hard, faded lump, somehow contains within it an entire Alderman Pea Vine. Twelve feet of indomitable spirit reaching for the sun, stretching turning, holding on, struggling ever upward, and eventually producing enough peas for, not only my future supper, but the future of it's entire lineage. It's agreement with mankind is to sacrifice it's personal struggle, losses and cost in exchange for the continuance of those like it that may follow. Eternity in a pea. Whodathunkit? And yet there it is.

We work, not only for our own sustenance and continuation of ourselves, of humanity, but for the sustenance and continuance of an entire race of peas. Likewise, but for our, humanity's, efforts, entire races of sheep or tomatoes might now be extinct. and without their efforts for survival, we might too have become extinct. It is an interlocking chain of purposes, a grand cosmic dance, an interconnection of interests that we serve ourselves best while we serve each other. And that's a dance that goes on, I hope, unbroken.

Ok. So maybe 80 degrees in April is too hot for an old guy to work in the sun without a hat.

Thanks for Listening,

Dave