Winged Visitors

I had the pleasure of visiting another Master Gardener's farm the other day. Barbara's artfully-designed garden is flourishing under the watchful gaze of this year's scarecrow. Touring the well-tended patch of earth awoke the gardening bug in me and I'm eager to see Phyllis's garden get underway this year. So far I've only tended our container garden, and worked at starting some flower beds along the driveway, but the time to plant is nigh and the seeds I started on the porch are clambering for larger spaces of their own.

In Barbara's garden I was struck by the onion blossom (actually, I believe she said it was a leek). I do enjoy blossoms serving winged pollinators, but prefer bees and butterflies to the common flies we saw crowding over this blossom.

My prejudices show clearly when the view of flies swarming a blossom awakens a feeling of revulsion in my throat. They're creatures just like the rest of us, but I see them as filthy pests. Go figure: the view of chickens scratching in manure gives me pleasure, knowing they're foraging for feed, but the sight of flies on a pristine flower blossom gives me the shivers.

The last of the house-hatched chicks is off the porch this week. They settled happily into their new enclosure atop the grass out front. (The presence of not-so-old piles of horse manure scattered about made their new home all the more attractive.) Building a sturdier enclosure for them, one with protection across the top is high on my endless list of projects. It's right up there with fencing enclosures around the new waterers than will allow alpacas, horses, and goats to graze down our front field (the neighbors have lawns, but our front stretch serves the animals--both domestic and wild--that grace our land) without wandering into areas where they're unwanted.

When I first caught sight of LaLa-the-goose's absence of long wing feathers the other day, I thought she had tangled with one of the puppies (who will be a year old later this month). However, another explanation occurred to me eventually: the geese are molting. I collect some of the sturdier feathers as I encounter them; perhaps they'll be useful as quill pens (without ink) when we volunteer as school teachers in the Fiddlers Grove Historic Village one-room school houses on Founders Day. As small as the Wheeler School and Fiddlers Grove School buildings are, I'm sure there will be room for a few goose feathers! I'll talk to the Fiddlers Grove curator; she may have some inkwells we could put in the classrooms.

A word about the myriad of butterflies gracing our fields and forests will serve to conclude today's meandering musings. The delicate creatures make the world their home, landing on buildings, plants, even people whenever they so choose, then stopping to taste their host or to spread their wings. To me, their presence provides opportunities to slow down a bit, to see the world in their time and to appreciate the beauty of our great, green earth.

Local readers, when you're at the Wilson County Fairgrounds & James E. Ward Agricultural Center, be sure to stop in the Fiddlers Grove General Store for note cards, postcards, and coffee mugs born here on P&CW Organic Farm! They'll be in stock in time for Founder's Day and your purchases will help to fund the Fiddlers Grove Historic Village as well as to feed our animals. Y'all come by now, hear?