The fragrance of the day

Today my yard is filled with the intoxicating fragrance of our blooming crabapple trees.   Sunday there was a hint of blossom in the fat buds, and with Monday's sunshine, these fully opened.

Bismarck is filled with crabapple and other blossoming trees and the pollinators are quite busy.  Although we don't have one, the fragrance of the plum trees takes me back to my childhood.  When we would get off the school bus at the mailbox located on the main road, the air would be filled with the sweet smell of the blossoms of the plums growing next to the farmhouse, welcoming children happy to be home from the cares of the school day.  In our pastures grew the wild plum bushes and one time, in the late summer, while baling hale, my father ate so many plums from the nearby bushes he came back to the house with a stomachache.

We have no room left in our yard for trees but I'm fortunate that my neighbors have plum trees and the fragrance wafts over to Red Oak House

When my father retired from the U.S. Army, we moved home to the maternal farm in Slope County, N.D., in June.  I was enamoured with the ritual of loading up what was called "lunch", really a mid-afternoon snack, for the men working the fields.  Coffee in jars and cookies or cake were carefully packed into a cardboard by Grandma Lilly and my Mom.  This was also a break for us from our chores in the house and the farmyard.  One of my fond memories is helping my mother and grandma feed the wet clothes from the washing into the electric wringer and watching these come out flattened, ready to take out to the clothesline (near the chicken coop) for hanging from the wire with wooden clothespins.  The wringer washer was fascinating to little ole me and I know I accidentally put my fingers into it for a time or two before I learned that painful lesson.

In my yard today, I've mowed and then planted some flowers, marveling at the miracle of the tiny seeds that will hopefully sprout and bring us beauty and food.   My other tool of the day is the dandelion digger.  Although I have a laptop, wifi, a Zen notepad, a big screen TV, an Apple TV device, and a Google Pixel phone, the tool of choice for digging dandelions and other weeds is this as shown below -- 16th century technology that gets the job done.  Yes, I do know the critical role that dandelions play for pollinators, but I assure you my neighbors provide them with plenty -- and then there are the aforementioned blooming trees.

The dandelion digger my mother gave to me.

Leonardo da Vinci said the average human being "looks without seeing, listens without hearing, touches without feeling eats without tasting, moves without physical awareness, inhales without awareness of odor or fragrance, and talks without thinking."       Strive to be above average.


Here's the postal delivery person with today's mail and magazines.  My husband has called to alert me that he is feeding us walleye freshly caught in the Missouri River this morning.  What an amazing world we live in!

My husband was a the best fisherman on the river today.  His lucky green bucket helps too.