There is no better weather than this.
The woods are waking, noisy with birds, vivid with tender bright leaves budding against the blue, blue sky, and the first flush of flowers. Azalea, jessamine, plum, huckleberry, violet. On the forest floor, the first lovely shoots of nettles, greenbriar, pokeweed.
All six hens are laying, even the youngest, who are no older than six months, and the oldest, who must be near seven years.
This week the sandhills flew over, great skeins of them, trumpeting, coursing straight north, their v-formation like the wake of the Lady's trailing fingers, drawing the new season along the sky.
