Earth Day

I knew that this was the real Earth Day when I referred to it as being Saturday. But the weekend was the time for community clean-up and various activities. For me, I suppose every day is Earth Day. We recycle obsessively, conserve electricity, combine errands to cut down on driving (even before petrol prices skyrocketed), and in recent years installed new energy-saving furnace and water heater and fridge and dishwasher. And yet still feel guilty for not doing more....There's always room for improvement.

Here's what's happening on my little piece of the planet.

Bulbs are flowering.



I'm moving a stone wall to expand a garden so I can stuff more rose bushes into it. They aren't large stones. The difficulty is that it's like a puzzle with infinite possibilities...I can't simply re-create the same configuration of stones. It's like starting all over again, trying each one to see how it fits against the rest of them.

When tugging up some weeds, I pulled away a clump of dirt and dislodged this bright orange disk....



Which turned out to be a baby painted turtle.




Quite a mystery, this discovery. The painted turtles lay their eggs all over our property. The eggs usually hatch in September and the little ones toddle over to the lake where they spend the winter under the ice (I think) and grow bigger.

I can't imagine why this hatchling is hanging out in my garden. Did he spend the winter there? I must conduct some study, and if necessary, consult a wildlife biologist.

I put it in a glass jar and it's sitting on my desk.



After I show him to the Chap, he'll go back where I found him.

My horse head looks better in my gardening hat than I do.



"I need more garden statuary," I told the Chap when I came inside last evening.



To his credit, he didn't ask, "Why?"