210331 Suddenly there are birds.

 Mar. 31

This morning the sun is shining and it feels like a true spring morning. Our meadow is filled with pink sunshine and the branches of the pine trees are red with expectation of new life. Suddenly there are birds. Through the winter there have been chickadees, crows and the pair of ravens who live here. This morning in the early sunshine I hear bird song all around and there are mating pairs flirting across the sky. A redwing in the first witch's hair, and three Bluejays in the blind witch's branches. Last night I heard the owl on the ridge for the second time.

  Fig, glad to be back, he is king of the mountain!

We arrived back at the Vineyard at supper time on Sunday. The drive was uneventful in the extreme. Traffic was very light on the 401; we ran into a bit of a rush as we started south from Montreal. But those cars gradually trailed off to their destinations and we were almost alone for the last 70 km. It was quite surreal to be here at first, after spending a week in Toronto. It feels so far from there, the busy household, the boisterous children. 

I have brought summer wear and some mosaic supplies - we have extended our time here to November, so I can ready the barn to be a studio, and perhaps I will be able to sell some mosaics in the summer. I have three projects in progress and several more waiting. I brought my dremel diamond cutter so can custom-cut pieces. But I enjoyed the free-break of my first project, the bread bowl; it is more organic.

Monday morning we had a blizzard, after arriving to find the snow mostly gone. By the afternoon however it was 5 degrees and the snow disappearing again. Yesterday the temperature reached 15 degrees. Fig and I walked to the ridge to see the stream. I was in heaven to see the clear cold water falling down its bed of rocks and tree roots. There is a cattle pond on the ridge and another shallow one above it: both look man-made with an artificial bank on one side. It seems they might have abandoned the upper one for some reason and completed the second. There were streams of water pouring down the meadow without even a bed to follow, like eager children who are too many to keep to the path and run helter skelter down the hill in the joy of their sudden freedom from the cold.

   

The ridge stream.                                               The melt-water pours down the meadow.

  

The big cattle pond and the upper pond.

                    

Life! Tiny paw prints in the snow and an early spider!

 The three witches.

I have wondered why the third witch has grey branches while the other two have black branches. I discovered yesterday that the old tree is not an apple like the first two; it is a hawthorn thick with thorny twisted branches! The apple on its branch was gone. It must have been a squirrel's stash fallen off or taken away. 

I explored down to the pond at the bottom of the property with Fig; I wore my new second-hand rain boots, having got my feet wet already, crossing to the ridge in the morning. I had to carry Fig in some places because of the plants and fallen trees underfoot. I want to discover why the pond was so empty of water last summer, whether or not some of the feeding streams have become diverted. It will take more than one explore to answer that. In past years the pond has been deep enough to swim in and there is a floating platform, left high and dry on one bank. Last summer it was a shallow frog pond. 

It is a joy to be back at the vineyard. "Surreal, but nice."* It is beautiful and new with the coming of spring  and takes my breath away.

Welcome, readers. Thank you for visiting. The world is new. Keep safe.

Mumma Yaga

The ruins of the old barn: we had a fire in its shelter at Christmas. Rain and Tal came and we drank champagne.

*Movie: Notting Hill, 1999