Here are a few pictures of our garden. For all the rain we have gotten, it has been dry. For all the heat, it has been cool. Is anyone else wigged out by the weather these days?

This is our tent set up for this month’s Jaffrey Riverfest. The decorations draped on the tent are single-use plastic bags. Research has shown that the average family uses an average of 125 single-use bags each month. One of our fabulous JCI members tied together 125 single-use plastic bags and Voila! The tent has been decorated. And fascinating but true…

Here are some books that I have been reading instead of the News. Just to show where I dip and bow. Because no longer do I read about climate change because it’s here. I read about possibilities and how I might join with others to help to bring about the necessary changes. And then fiction to lighten and engage.

Toey is our best mother hen. She is consistently and obnoxiously broody. Unfortunately, when we later put Toey and her seven pullets together with the twelve other hens, they accepted the babies, but not Toey. Drama ensues.

Here are some photos and videos from the day the guys from the Harris Center came to band the baby kestrels. Stressful for both the birds and me, but everyone survived the experience. (Though Bird Conservation Director Phil Brown’s hands will carry scars. Apparently, even baby kestrel talons are talons.)

Photos and movies of the month include a microblast wind that flipped our outside couch and table top across the patio—but left the stalwart chickens admiring the activity with no apparent harm; kestrel babies (photo credit Phil Brown of the Harris Center); a turkey in the chicken area; voluptuous peonies; and a hotly contested race of our rubber duckies, with our rubber frog and tadpoles as referee and audience. And an unwelcome spider.

Lice anyone? Bumblefoot? Dirty bums? We had that perfect storm here at Darwin’s View. The result? Two plus full days devoted to cleaning out and cleaning up Cluckingham Palace. And chicken spas.

Nature has been fabulous lately . . . depending on where you live, but I live at Darwin’s View and here the weather has provided a little bit for everyone. I will note that nature is fabulous until ants invade the house and Carl finds a toe-biting beetle swimming in the pool. Then nature takes on a darker, less appealing tone. This day has been one of those days.

Here are some photos of the salt water batteries being loaded out of the house to their pick up destination. Carl found a company that will recycle and repurpose them. Apologies to anyone who had hoped for a very large paperweight!

Porcupines are cute but not welcome. They eat the sweet new growth on trees. All too often that kills the trees. All too often, people shoot porcupines. Here, we merely encourage them to move on.

A friend of ours midwifed ten baby goats into the world two weeks ago. This weekend filled up with another visit to baby goat land—waves of them leaping and cavorting on rocks while some of the visitors brushed Maybelle, the resident dairy cow.

The turkeys are in full regalia for spring. The Hens race about, slightly reminiscent of armadillos, while the Toms strutt their stuff.

Sadly, we lost our Isa Brown, Lucy, this past week. She was the friendliest of our current lot, reminiscent of Ping in her forthrightness and willingness to be picked up and hugged. Her most recent molt had changed her from a scruffy tan and white ragamuffin into a nearly elegant elder. Last Wednesday night, I noted that she wasn’t on the roost but on the floor of the coop. Maybe she was having an egg?

As we returned home from voting, Carl and I enjoyed a different view of Mt. Monadnock: from downtown. Carl noted the many angles of the mountain one can see from the different points of this region, and what a different impression they give. I ran with that thought to perspectives, and how many people there are in the world, each with their own views and opinions. And that returned me, like a boomerang, to a topic that I’ve attempted to write about a few times.

Frod’s handyman works just like Carl and I do! The evolution of this frog’s home is amusing and remarkable in its resemblance to how Darwin’s View developed.

These are photographs from the snow storm that hit on March 14th. We got about 2.5 to 3 feet of snow, but the snow drifts were up to Carl’s chest. We were snowed in for the first time in our 30+ years of marriage. Even Carl admitted defeat.

Our new batteries arrived in the Solar Pack truck. The intention was to have our tractor unload and take them down to the basement. That didn’t work. One battery is 450 pounds. Our tractor is about 450 pounds. We called our neighbors.

I’m remembering January 2018. I had broken my arm that Thanksgiving. My mother, still alive if with Parkinson's, was visiting. It was a New Year and I got up to write, to draw in the dark of that day’s dawning. I built up the fire in the wood stove because the temperature outside was in the negative numbers. And the chickens at the time were inside the house. Then the fire alarms went off.