The fish ladder

Georgia and I went by the fish ladder in Turner's Falls today and were able to see some shad making their way upstream.


The windows are down a few flights of stairs. They glow with a murky green. We came last week and there were no fish at all. Nothing.

We have a Shad bush in our yard, which is a sweet little tree that blooms in the spring. According to the native americans who named the bush, it blooms at the same time that the shad are running.



I love the notion of having an on-land reminder of when to head down to the river. So smart.

We had run into Turners to pick up a chocolate cream pie for Rob's birthday tomorrow and we just stopped at the fish ladder for a quick peek.

We watched the empty windows for a few moments and then fish emerged out of the ghostly green like shadows, then disapeared again as they wavered in the water, swimming against the current. Georgia and I counted 10 fish who made it through to the opening in the ladder in the 5 minutes we stood there!

"You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body"

C.S. Lewis

Beautiful song....

Mirabai Ceiba

I got an email about this couple being on tour with a link to one of their songs. I begrudgingly clicked on the link in the middle of a busy day and have not been able to stop listening to them since.

This link is to a song A Hundred Blessings that is a Rumi poem (the second stanza below) put to music.



click on it here:
http://www.mirabaiceiba.com/disco.en.php

Rumi - Hidden Music - Telling the Secret -

I.

Let us fall in love again and scatter gold dust all over the world.
Let us become a new spring and feel the breeze drift in the heaven´s scent.
Let us dress the earth in green, and like the sap of a young tree
let the grace from within sustain us.
Let us carve gems out of our stony hearts
and let them light our path to Love.
The glance of Love is crystal clear
and we are blessed by its light.

II.

When Love comes suddenly and taps on your window,
run and let it in but first,
shut the door of your reason.
Even the smallest hint chases love away
like smoke that drowns the freshness of the morning breeze.
To reason Love can only say, the way is barred, you can´t pass through
but to the lover it offers a hundred blessings.
Before the mind decides to take a step
Love has reached the seventh heaven.
Before the mind can figure how
Love has climbed the Holy Mountain.
I must stop this talk now and let
Love speak from its nest of silence.

Such a satisfying video!

Nature by Numbers from Cristóbal Vila on Vimeo.

I watched it again and again. The girls loved it, too. It satisfies some deep yearning/knowing of a connection between math and nature, lovely.

Regular Life. Springtime!

Here is a crazy huge snapping turtle crossing the street at Bird Brook to find a place to lay her eggs.
Look at those claws!

Frog and newt time again!






























Georgia gathering sap.



















Cookie looks so angelic























Mom and Georgia listening to Cookie talk

Some spring sunshine and dear Sparkle

My three weeks of antibiotics are finished! Whoop it up!!
Lily also got strep so she has 10 days to finish and her's taste foul so she has to hold her nose. Thankfully she's almost done.

Leave our home, Strep!

Cookie loves to sleep in the mudroom where she won't miss any comings and goings.





Frog eggs from the vernal pool at the bottom of our yard. Georgia is beyond thrilled at the sudden arrival of a pond filled with singing frogs.
















Hooray for PEEPERS! Hear them singing.








Ikea road trip during April vacation. Everyone ate the meatballs and loved laying on all the beds and chairs like Goldilocks.






We went to the crappy beach covered with trash across the street from the Ikea in New Haven and found crabs making weird bubbles and lots of baby crabs hiding under bigger crabs, shells and many horsehoe crab shells in pieces. It felt like no one had been there in forever.

Easter at our house this year, which was a first.

The bunny was good to us. The girls made these sweet bunnies out of bendaroos. I love the carrots.

Easter morning and then Easter day spend outside making a safe chicken pen for the chickens (We lost another one to a loose dog. My chicken. Cupcake. Don't want to talk about it.)

Lily and Cook

Georgia and frog and chocolate bunny. She did not get her hands confused and bite the wrong creature. Thank goodness.

Pear blossoms

We made a new chicken pen so that we can keep the chickens safe and contained. Hmmmm See that they have escaped and are wandering. Sigh. We think they're flying out, but they are very sneaky so no one has witnessed it yet.