MARGARET KNIGHT
508-627-8894
After the long months with the outdoors looking pretty much always the same – gray and brown – it’s almost shocking to see how quickly the vista out the window changes. Every day, the many shades of green, yellow and red of the infant leaves shift subtly and inexorably toward that homogeneous deep olive green that is Chappy’s summer color. Maybe all the May showers will bring spectacular June flowers. Hopefully it’s not too rainy and cold for the few bees that are left to do their job pollinating, as the beach plum bushes and apple trees are in full bloom.
In the spring, change speeds up, including the rate of birth and death. The chickens scratch away at the edges of our yard where the bugs and worms are busy turning the old dead leaves into dirt, which will grow the next new thing. Unfortunately, the chickens eat the beneficial worms, but they also convert everything they eat into fertile droppings which enrich the sandy soil. Sprouts are shooting up everywhere, and babies are being born. Gardeners and farmers are always in the business of both growing and killing, even vegetarians. It’s just selective killing — the insects that eat the plants we’re growing, the mosquitoes that eat us, the rats when they become a problem — and then we eat the vegetables.
One of our chickens has become broody. She is off most of the day and all night lying on a secret nest that we haven’t found yet. Hens sit very still when they’re on a batch of eggs, and they find a spot that makes them blend perfectly into their surroundings. In the past, we missed seeing a nest right in the midst of a front yard daylily patch. Unfortunately, this batch of eggs is never going to come to anything, as the rooster is pint-sized compared to the hen, and I’m sure nothing happened all those times he was perched on her back.
They make a cute couple, though. When Buffy appeared from her nest after her first night on duty, she was starving. After lots of snacking on cracked corn, laying pellets, and new grass, she and Rudy, the rooster, were standing beak to beak. He reached out and pecked a couple times at her beak and feathers. I suppose he was just cleaning her up, but it was very sweet. Meanwhile, her normally placid temperament has changed, and she puffs herself up to twice her size when Gladys Scalphead approaches. (Gladys was first called Scalphead after surviving a hawk attack when she lived at the Farm Institute, but we’re trying to give her a chance at a new identity by renaming her Gladys — with Scalphead as a last name.)
The Cressys were such an important part of life on Chappy for so many years, and we’ve already missed them since they began spending more time in Falmouth, where their daughter, Holly, lives. Now Joe, who loved to sail, has left the fine waters of Chappaquiddick permanently. We will have a chance to remember and celebrate him at his memorial service tomorrow, Saturday, at 1:30 p.m. at the Whaling Church.
A considerable sign of impending summer is the change in ferry hours. The Chappy ferry will run straight through until 11:15 p.m. today and Saturday evenings. Then next Thursday, May 26, it will go on the summer schedule, running from 6:45 a.m. until midnight until mid-October.
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