The Great Awakening

Today was a delicious day packed with different weather patterns and full of activity. Blue skies in the morning, perfect for tilling up the garden, forming the beds, pruning all the fruit trees, (yes, I know it's a peculiar time of the year to be pruning, but it just felt right, and it's always worked before!), pruning the roses in the back garden (ditto, above!), digging the dandelions. In French, they're called 'dents des lions' which means teeth of lions, and I could almost hear them growling at me as I carefully removed them in one piece, tap root intact! It's so exciting to see that all the roses made it through the winter unscathed, and all have lots of strong, new growth starting up around the bottom of each bare stock. The climbing rose is totally out of control, and when things are just beginning to come alive, the old rambler is simply covered with new growth. It'll be a sight for sore eyes a little later on. We have added a couple of plum trees this week to our developing orchard, a generous gift from Sim and Lionel Fortin. Next week we plan to add another pear, a couple of apples, and a pair of cherries. That should do it for a while. There are forget-me-nots all over the place which gives a wonderfully domesticated feel about the place, despite the fact that our old chum, the naughty Black Bear, has come a few times to reorganize this and that. He wasn't at all sure that he liked the squirrel feeding station, and took tremendous pains to tear it all apart. Very clever of him to remove the squirrel house from the tree! He had to lift it up an inch or two and then pull. He tried to take the bench off the porch, but it proved too cumbersome for him, so he left his mark on it before stomping off. It's so lovely that we can all live in harmony with each other! A little heaven on earth...