Baby chickens!!

The first of our small flock of chickens arrived last week! Her name is Maisy, and she loves to hang out with us. When we put her back in the brooder, a dog kennel, she chirps her tiny head off, begging to be let out. As you see in the photo, she likes to "help" while I work at the computer.

Next week her flock sisters will arrive. They were all due last week but two didn't make it after two days on the truck, and one was never shipped. I'll post their photos next week.

For anyone considering raising chickens, I highly recommend it. Even three days in I'm getting more joy out of the experience than I ever thought possible. Who'd ever imagine the fun of typing up a blog while tiny little feet dance over your fingers?

Learning to Live in the Now and Go with the Flow

I started my daughter in one day of preschool last January. It became apparent pretty quickly that it wasn't time yet, and the more I thought about it the more I like the idea of homeschooling. Then a week or so ago she started talking about "her school" and wanting to go again.

I live in Colorado but hail from Washington. I miss my family, miss the green and damp and salt water. Just as we begin to make plans to move their, we get a dream job here. Just as I settle deeper here (by planting fruit trees or starting a small flock of chickens), I have a dream about my mom that makes me want badly to move home. Or I hear about a super cool farm near Portland, Oregon. And then I see my future there - at least until I am faced with what anamazing community I have here when a friend offers to lend me her entire cloth diaper stash for my baby due in September.

It can be seventy five degrees here, urging me to put peas in the ground, and then snow, pulling me to hot cocoa, tea, and blankets.

I drive myself crazy with my planning sometimes, and my restlessness (Sag rising, for you astrologers). I can tell the universe is trying to remind me to live in the moment and go with the flow. We may live here for another twenty years, or only another three. I may homeschool or not. Peas may sprout or not.

That's my meditation these days. Breathe. Live now. Have faith. It's hugely challenging for me. But when I can breathe into those spaces, it feels so, well, spacious.

New Life: Early Spring and Inner Stirrings

I've a stow away growing inside, a thirteen-week-old fetus who already has a name and for whom we looked at bunkbeds today. As humans we plan. We get caught up (I get caught up) in the next few years, living in this house with two small children, with a bunkbed and a single income (not mine) and thoughts of schooling and college funds and all-important middle names.

Meanwhile, in the garden the garlic my daughter and I planted last fall is three inches tall, erect and proud and bright green. Daffodils and tulips have taken courage from the garlic sprouts, and are also a couple inches tall, braving the still freezing nights. It's been warm during the day, so I who sleep in a heated and insulated house at night find it hard to believe more hasn't sprouted - and yet I am also held to the truth of time and natural unfolding by the plants' tentative gestures. All in good time.

I think of my babe like one of the pea seeds I planted at the end of February as soon as the soil could be worked (a tease in Colorado, since we can still have several hard freezes). I wanted to peek, so I dug up one of the seeds and YES! it has germinated, just a teeny bit. Though it still may very well freeze and not sprout.

In a few weeks I will probably peek at my baby with an ultrasound, too. Oh, how I long to probe the secrets of the world and peek beneath the soil... but: the pea is not ready to sprout. I tucked it back beneath the composty soil, and I give thanks my little fetus is safe in my womb, undisturbed. All in good time.

Such are the lessons of patience, faith, and waiting for all good things to pass. February and March are impatient times for me. So too is the first trimester of pregnancy. But I'm learning, slowly. The Goddess offers much to gently remind me that all in good time will things flourish and bloom. Maybe some year I won't put out seeds a month early. At least it's not tomatoes, like I planted three months early my first spring here... and again several springs later. Oh, do I get restless. Trust. I need to learn some trust and faith and patience. It's a good thing babies come exactly when they are supposed to.

May your garden and your health be blessed this early spring.