Today, and for the past week, I am more impressed with the tree's green than with the flower's spectrum. Though the ephemerals--bold trilliums and tender bellflowers, are stunning and lovely by turns--I'll take the soft new leaves, so like how I imagine baby bats, in their trembling brilliant greens on any May day and champion them above and beyond the sexiest flowers.

Spring has swept us away in it's flurry of activity. It invites you to wake at first light and spend every moment outside, provides you with task after task, which you take to gladly, and fuels your activities with boundless energy, sprung from depths unknown.

There are creatures to be fed and watered three times a day now (our watering systems, in particular, need refining): pigs, sheep, ducks, ducklings, heifers, chickens, and seedlings. They all need copious amounts of water, fresh forage, grain, hay, good shelter, predator proof boundaries, and careful humans. There is milk to be processed into yogurt (we love and value all manner of beings that make up our menagerie, but the yogurt continues to be our bread and butter for the time being, and so it must be made). There are pigs and cows to be taken to our talented and exacting butchers, and pork and beef to be picked up from them. And that meat and yogurt must be taken to stores, restaurants, and schools for people to enjoy and be nourished. And the gardens! They were feeling a little droughty the past few days and are now glad of this soak they've gotten. I am so pleased to be planting these days. The winter was spent ensouling our home and now it feels as though that spirit is being extended to everything we touch and change and help to grow. Perhaps there is an aura in the works.