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| Wild Flora Farm Mid May to Mid June 2007 |
ONCE SPRING SPRUNG, I was spending much of my time in the garden and the rest of my time trying to recover from too much unaccustomed physical activity. So it's only now, when the days have turned a bit too warm for me to want to be outside for hours and the heat has brought out the biting insects that are my nemesis, that I put fingers to keyboard and report the news from Wild Flora's Farm.
Our lead for this installment is the arrival of the ducks. For details on the breed and how and why I got them, see the post "Old Frontiers in Pest Control" from my Wild Gardening blog. For sheer cuteness, see the photo above, which shows the ducklings on their first morning with me, May 22, when they were just three weeks old. (Click on the photo to go to a web album with more photos of farm life over the past 6 weeks.)
But they grow up fast, don't they? The photo below shows the same ducks less than a month later. In the intervening weeks, they have proven to be just as comical as I thought they were going to be, but a whole lot more work. They eat anything they can lay their beaks on, including any prize plants I'm stupid enough to let them get at. (And even though they can't fly yet--I dread that day--it turns out that those necks can stretch for miles.) They then convert everything they eat into large, wet messes that are produced (with a self-satisfied splooting sound) on an average of every 10 minutes. I spend a truly amazing amount of time feeding them and then cleaning up the results.
But here's the good news: 1. This is a great way to appreciate (by which I mean hate) the great circle of life. 2. Duck poop is good fertilizer: My perennials are starting to look like shrubs. 3. At last I have a theme for the comic novel every writer is obliged to produce after moving to the country. Working title: SNADU. That is, Situation Normal, All Ducked Up.
A footnote: I finally gave in to the requests of one dear friend who wanted me to post a photo of myself to this blog, and you'll find it below. It's the photo that accompanied my application for Canadian citizenship--news that would be more exciting than the ducks except that it takes about a year for the application to be processed. I am happy about this development, however, and looking forward to being a full-fledged Canuck.
