My boots before total immersion.
Except where it’s flooding, it’s mostly mud around here. The kind of thick mud that makes a squelchy noise when walked in, the sort that’s the perfect consistency for a child’s mud pies. It’s not, however, too conducive to planting.
Instead of putting in spinach, lettuce, peas, and many other rain-delayed seeds I ramble around looking for signs of spring. Who doesn’t see beauty in springtime? As e.e.cummings wrote, “The world is mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful.”
Flooding magnifies last autumn's leaves.
Ellie the Cat checks for fish in the flooded barnyard.
Yes, the long winter was hard. A few of our newly planted fruit trees barely survived. Worse, we lost a few chickens and three of our honeybee colonies didn’t survive either. But joyous signs of life are everywhere.
Bees are beginning to emerge, finding spring flowers and warming air.
Wildflowers are popping up in the woods.
A cheery sight on a gray day.
It reminds me of The Secret Garden, what I’ve called the book that saved me. In it, a little girl describes nature:
“It’s the most beautiful place. Thousands of lovely things grow on it and there are thousands of little creatures all busy building nests and making holes and burrows and chippering or singing or squeaking to each other. They are so busy and having such fun under the earth or in the trees or heather. It’s their world.”
It's time for joy, no matter how far our boots sink.
Bit of Earth Farm 
Mud! The 5th season. I was thinking of planting rice. And of making floor tiles with little doggy footprints in a nice brown glaze….
Ooh, I’d love to see those tiles.
Mud is so welcome after all that snow. Mud, Mud glorious mud! Nothing quite like it for cooling the blood! ( courtesy of my pig Samson)
Samson is a poet.
It’s muddy and has been flooding around here too. We had the second highest recorded amount of rainfall (since 1870) for April. The family of the Hare’s best friend had no electricity for three days and couldn’t get down their driveway.
Global warming – or global wetting?
It seems everywhere around the world the weather is more extreme. That’s the misnomer in the term “global warming.” It doesn’t have much to do with warming as it does with wide variability. In the U.S. they’re relying more on the term “global climate change.” Doesn’t make it easier to fathom. I hope it dries up your way, but not too much!
So TRUE!