Rachel

Put Niece Rachel to work w/ the chainsaw.  I am so happy to have an electric one.  I popped in the battery, checked the chain oil level and hit the button.  Started right up.  She cut through the opportunistic plum trees that popped up around the plum I planted in the corner of the garden.  I would grab the cut trees and toss them over the fence.  One year, I'd left the cut trees in a pile in the back of the garden.  Meant to move them over to the tall grass but before I could a brown thrasher had made a nest in them.  Preferring the thrasher to a neat garden, I left them for her.  We threw the salt lick I'd picked up at Farm and Fleet in the back of Jormungandr and drove it out to the deer lick.  The lick is on a rise at the far end of the meadow.  Near enough I can take pictures of the deer but far enough that Whip doesn't go ballistic (that doesn't always work).  We traveled on to the far end of the old woods and went looking for the first flowers.  Neighbor Doug had said he'd seen hepatica already.  When we first started walking the woods we couldn't see anything.   It took a few moments to kind of 'assimilate' to the forest environment.  Then we started to see them - patches of bright green ramp leaves just peaking above the dead leaf clutter.  Rachel and I each pulled one and ate it - wonderfully mild at this stage though there is a lingering aftertaste of onion/garlic.  I found the thin spear like leaves of spring beauty - even found a stalk w/ buds.  I walked to an area I remembered was thick w/ cutleaf toothwort in other years.  Yes, found the tiny little leaves emerging  if I gently brushed the detritus aside.  Told Rachel it was too early for miterword or saxifrage as I walked nearer to the swampy bottom of the woods.  I was wrong - found the fuzzy looking leaves of a saxifrage plant.  We - Rachel, Whip, and I - got back into Jormungandr.  No flowers here yet but I expect in another week the forest floor will begin to bloom.