Biomass

As I grab grass and wrestle weeds at home (by the armfuls, and with great urgency while the weeding is easy), and drive from home to work and home to Brian's school and back, I keep getting gobsmacked by the plant mass that has exploded in our area. The combination of an early hot, dry spell followed by this period of cool, wet weather has kicked things into overdrive. I predict our hay guy's second cutting is going to be incredible, as he got the first cutting of newly-planted orchardgrass off during that dry spell and now his fields are getting optimum moisture. That's great for us; hmmm, maybe I could breed a couple ewes this fall? 😉

Sarai is getting a little scoop of oats every morning until it warms up again

Speaking of "plant mass," we visited Schreiner's Iris Gardens last Sabbath. This is a near-annual pilgrimage, although we didn't make it last year. To our surprise, they are charging a per vehicle parking fee now. Nearby Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm does this and gets hoards of visitors every year, so it certainly makes financial sense and adds to their revenue stream. And the visual delights are worth the price of admission! Here's a small sampling:

You know you're getting close when you see fields of flowers (crimson clover in foreground)

Speaking of weeding, I ended up going through my blogroll blog by blog this morning and deleted probably half of the ones on my list. Some addresses were no longer valid, some hadn't posted in ten years or more. It set me back on my emotional heels and left me melancholy, thinking of the passage of time, of water under the bridge, of lost connections. It also makes me think of what I'm doing with my "one precious life," what impact I'm making, what legacy I'm leaving. We're not here just to be part of the biomass!

I'm still working on creating a positive legacy with this:

One thing this "Selfie Generation" does well is pose!

It was another busy weekend of going here and there. I finished spinning a second sample of Jamieson & Smith combed Shetland top, and then pulled out the first sample I'd spun to ply. But when I started to dissemble the spindle, this happened:

I broke this spindle years ago when I was in Spokane visiting my dad, and he helped me glue it back together. I will glue it again, but at that moment I was away from home with time to fill and nothing else to fill it with, so I bunted!

Waddya know? It worked!

That's it for now from . . .