Artfully Wild Blog Along: 4 September 2021

• I awoke with a sense of dread. I asked Mac (who sleeps with the radio and ear buds), "Did anything else awful happen overnight?" I didn't want to get up and face a day of more heartbreak. "It's okay, nothing more."
• The duck with the injured leg, the one that injured said leg escaping from the orchard through a wire netting fence, was waiting for breakfast outside the orchard! She hopped, stumbled and flapped her way back over the fence, making her way to the feeding dish. When lockdown is over, and we can access materials, we plan on replacing the fence.
• I thought gardening in the countryside was a peaceful, meditative affair. But today I wore my newish hearing aids and was driven to distraction by dozens of small birds having a conference in the pohutukawa tree. Are they always there? I don't know because I don't usually wear the aids around home.
• This year I didn't put in a winter garden, and now it is spring and nothing is ready. As I said yesterday, no seeds sown in trays in the sun by the dining room window, the garden beds full of long grass and other weeds. Today I continued working on the bed I started yesterday and finished it, so now have room for some of the ordered seedlings. Tomorrow, another bed. If I can keep up the pace I will have space for all of them by the time they arrive.
• The keruru are definitely in mating mode - while I was gardening they were chasing each other around the garden, flying very low over my head. I hope they get their courting rituals over soon as I actually felt endangered! But they are magnificent birds.
• At the end of summer, my two beehives had collapsed from lack of proper care, and one was queenless. I thought they would both die, but in a last desperate attempt to save them, I merged the two hives. The single hive has made it through winter and I am hopeful it will take off and grow strong enough to make up a second. Today we did a hive inspection and put in a second varroa treatment. I am so happy to be back with a healthy hive once more. I adore my bees; they are such amazing creatures.
• For the first time since she came to live with us about three years ago, Luna is not demanding food with menaces tonight. We saw her earlier eating a small rabbit. Much as they are cute, rabbits are an awful pest, so we didn't rescue it. She is spending the evening stretched out in front of the fire with a very large tummy.
• Life under lockdown is so small and restricted, and yet it is also infinite. I have always felt a strong connection to this place we came to 21 years ago, always enjoyed the way working on the land strengthened that connection. The older I get the bigger the small things become for me. Lockdown has increased that feeling.
  
• A drop of water hanging from a plum blossom holds the entire world. The whole world is that drop of water.
  
• I am the drop of water. The drop of water is me.