Another Day in the Country
In seven days
© Another Day in the Country
This is the week that was seven days of wind, sunshine, rain, and possibility.
In one week, it can change from winter to spring. Come to think of it, in a week your whole life can change course. If you’ve had a good week, savor it!
I always feel as if the week begins on Monday, when my sister goes to work, but the week really starts on Sunday, according to the calendar.
If the weather is nice, Sunday is a yard day, and my yard is coming to life.
The magnolia tree is blooming, as is my Bradford pear — whose blooms I always welcome in spite of being told those trees are an invasive species.
In my 25 years of tending yards in Kansas, I’ve fought off elm, ash, hackberry, cedar, redbud, wild plum, liquid amber, cottonwood, and even oak seedlings coming up in the wrong places, but never have I seen a single volunteer Bradford pear.
In the 1990s, I began planting spring flowers every October in Kansas soil. I never could afford a lot of bulbs, but every year several dozen possibilities went into the ground.
Bulbs had a pretty good chance for survival, I figured.
I’ve seen iris blooming in fields where houses once stood — even in ditches.
Every spring, I see phlox blooming under trees, on the edges of fields, like the one across the street from my house in Ramona.
There used to be two homes in that field. Some lady planted those flowers, and I love seeing them still bloom in the spring.
Early on, I remember asking Jakie Brunner, who lived across the street from our Aunt Naomi, whether he wanted me to pick up anything for him in town.
He said he needed some tulip bulbs, and I asked how many I should get.
”Get me six, sweethart,” he said.
I thought he probably meant six dozen, but he assured me it was just six bulbs.
“Three yellow, three red. I do that every year,” he said.
After he died, we bought Jakie’s house. I mowed that yard for years. Every spring, there were patches of red tulips coming up here, there, and everywhere. I never saw yellow ones, but red colors survived and returned every spring.
I like the idea of flowers that I’ve planted still blooming long after I’m gone, like Jakie’s red tulips or his famous peonies, which still bloom in Ramona.
I like the idea of planting trees and imagining them still standing — blooming, fruiting, waving in the breeze, thriving down through the years.
I have planted many trees in Ramona, and happily most of them lived.
With great optimism I planted dogwood trees in the more wooded part of our yard, but they weren’t happy. They’d been so beautiful in California, but Kansas just wasn’t their thing.
I once brought several blue spruces from my parents’ farm in Oregon to plant here, but they were discontented. One fir tree did survive and stands tall beside the Ramona House, but the spruces called it quits.
I decided trees are like people. Not everyone is cut out to be a country dweller.
In Kansas, you pretty much have to want to be here. Truth is, I was planting trees early on hoping they’d be happy here, and didn’t know for sure if I’d be happy here in Ramona long term.
And then this last fall, I splurged and bought a whole slew of tulip and daffodil bulbs.
The ground was so hard in the fall that I had to buy a drill bit to plant the bulbs.
My sister came to help, and we finally got them into the ground. You can imagine how eagerly I’ve been waiting for spring.
Twenty years of bulbs being planted and trying to remember where I put them — I don’t want to repeat myself — on an acre of land that is a lot of ground to cover.
This week, they’ve begun to bloom.
We cleaned up the area around the pond this week, cutting down last year’s old growth.
I was letting the pond dry up to remove sediment, but then it rained. So today I filled the little pond (it’s more like a puddle) so the ducks could swim and take a bath.
It’s pure joy watching the ducks. They have so much fun splashing, flipping water with their wings like little kids at the swimming pool.
This particular puddle/pond is only a couple of feet deep, but they manage to dive under the water and suddenly appear somewhere else.
I laugh out loud seeing them play. I’ve taken so many videos it’s ridiculous. No one in my friendship circle wants to see more pictures of ducks playing in water.
And still, just today, on another day in the country, I took another picture.