Adding Compost to the Soil

Day after day of dazzling sunshine has lately lifted my spirits. It helps too that I sent off my poetry manuscript to the publisher this week and that the birds are back. Purple finches and dark-eyed juncos at our backyard feeder. White pelicans crowding the Red River. Hawks, eagles, and, of course, robins. A multitude […]

Melt

Despite the Arctic airmass that’s been hanging over us, plunging temperatures into the minus double digits, spring is coming. The snow is ever-so-slowly receding towards the forest shadows, the geese are returning, and the other day I saw a seagull soar over our house. Mowat is also fully spring fevered, visiting Gus, the golden retriever, […]

Change in the Air

So, spring. Change in the air. Our backyard a sudden chaos of birdsong: the chattering boat-tailed grackles, the red-winged blackbirds shrieking as they puff out their red patches, the sweet chirping of the robins. Yesterday, I took Mowat for a run on a dyke further up Rahl’s Island and heard the frogs, happily chanting on […]