Rudbeckia weeds loved by chickens, garden in April and hostas

Our Cherokee Rose bush will have white flowers in a few days.  This is what our goat was trying to eat behind the fence the other day.  When it blooms the flowers will be so fragrant.

  

Our little red chickens have been loving the 'rudbeckia' weed flowers I have been feeding them.  They are giving us four to six eggs per day, little brown ones and once in a while a bigger one.

 

 This is what they are eating.  I have called it 'white aster' in the past, but the Tennessee weed gallery I found a few weeks ago called it a relative of the black-eyed susan, or rudbeckia plant.

and this is what they look like from a bit back.. they are behind the area I tilled outside, so they are going to stay there and be good chicken fodder when I need a handful of something they can eat.

What the garden looks after my work yesterday

The 'Blue Angel' hosta

we have several of these coming up

The Frances Williams hosta, it will get a lot bigger!  

And Esme's lambs ear plant behind it.

The Blue Angel always 'gets up early' in the Spring.  The Frances Williams starts to come in behind it, about now, and the Aureomarginata won't wake up until the first week of June or so... and I am not sure why but it just is always a late riser.

Esme's dianthus plant from the Amish greenhouse, still strong!

My mom used to call the perennial version of this (biennial, I've actually learned) 'sweet william'.  That was in Minnesota.  We grew them around the side of the house in town, with lilies of the valley, blue grape hyacinth and tiger lilies.  She had bluebells on the other side of the house, and red Appledoorn tulips.  I was always so fascinated by gardens, even back then.

So this is actually a biennial - and then it reseeds itself every year from the first plant, and becomes 'almost a perennial'.  It is a fascinating little plant.  The edges can be fringed, like this one, or smooth - depending on the variety.  It can come in a wide array of pinks, reds, whites and purple combinations.

tangible

It was a bit colder than I liked out there this morning, but the dewdrops were shining very pretty from the rain last night.  The lemon balm (Above) was such a bright bright green I am glad the camera could catch some of it.

The rose bush is putting out its new leaves, transforming red to green.  I caught a nice close-up of it, too, doing its thing.

and one of our resident herd dogs (Sweetie) behind the fence watching the goat trying her very best to eat a Cherokee rose bush, which is behind another fence! (for just that reason).  She is tied up on a long dog lead string that stretches up and down our driveway, allowing her to eat any greens along that pathway.  And I come out with the camera she gets my attention and says 'I can still eat this.  See?'

In the obscure thought category.. I had this memory come back to me today as I walked up to the mailbox to pop an order for seeds into the mailbox.

I remember when I was a child (probably 9 or 10) kneeling down on the board over the creek at Arbo Road, the one that flowed into the Prairie River, and holding a big flat slate rock in the current.  I remember how cold the water was, as cold as the air this morning, and how strong the flow was, pulling against my grip on the rock like a lever.  I remember thinking how very cold it was, and how much of the water had passed by, and how much was still coming downstream.

It was probably thinking of all of those idioms from the farm yesterday - reliving those moments, feeling the place and the grass, the trees and the road in my mind's eye again... It is something I wish I could take pastels or paints to paper and make visible for everyone - but so much of my good memories are tangible, inexplicable almost memories.  It is a feeling of bounded and boundless space meeting and intersecting, the taste of the air and how it changes between sun and shadow, dry grass and moss, the tangy scent of creeping charlie as it is pulled from creeping up the walls, green painted tarpaper rough under fingers, sundried sheets slightly stiff on the line, big yellow basswood leaves flapping in the wind, yet soft and slick at the same time under your fingers, dried leaves brittle and separating into a thousand fragments in your hand...  It is the change in temperature, the feel of old enamel painted metal and rusted red iron  and big flat stones leading to the house and distance looking down the gravel road. 

This is the Cherokee Rose, (Rosa laevigata) that the goat is trying to eat up above.  It will bloom soon in a fragrant profusion of small white flowers with yellow centers.  Here is the Wikipedia link. It says it is actually an invasive species to North America, but brought so long ago, in the 1700s, that it has naturalized across the Southeastern United States.  My husband's family definitely thinks of them as naturalized.  They are popping up in several places in the woods here, and we have let this one continue to grow where it came up and enjoy it every year.  The bees love them, they gather around the flowers as well when they arrive.