Have Dirt

Will stick fingers in it. And plants too. And when I'm done, I'll write. My muscles are achin', my bones are cracklin but the whole yard is raked and ready for seed in it's manly little bald spots.

Our backyard is large for suburbia, .99 of an acre. Far back against an old stone wall that purportedly dates to the earliest settlers (But then again, Bavaria by any other name...) is the site of this years project du jour, a wildly luxurious perennial garden surrounding the weeping cherry tree I planted last fall. My mother and I were admiring the depth of my rototilling, the looseness of the soil, fluffy as chocolate cake mix, when my mother looked up and proclaimed, "Look, a pileated woodpeckerr home right in your half dead oak tree!"
And lo and behold, deep inside that narrow rectangular hole, is a family of Woody's.

Each year I plant a garden that starts out a well thought out and financed venture and ends up a tithe to our family of deer and our blubbery friend the woodchuck. Today, as I knelt down to loosen the soil, I found the tailfeather of a red-tailed hawk. A token of appreciation since it's certainly my mouth watering lettuce that draws forth his dinner most evenings.

We also found a big nest in the crook of another oak tree. It could be a squirrel nest, or an owl nest or a crow nest or even a hawk nest. I'll just have to wait and see.