Ah, Spring!

The Gateway to Paradise: A Garden Entrance at Briarwood Last Spring

After an unusually mild winter, spring seems to have come early to Fairfield County. It has been accompanied by what the ancients would have considered to be powerful omens. Jupiter and Venus have been profoundly beautiful as they danced together in the western sky over the past few weeks. Mars is ascending steadily in the east, and friends who are not as distracted by city lights as we are here at Briarwood tell me that Saturn is clearly visible on the eastern horizon. Last night, a mighty thunderstorm struck after mid-night and the counties to our east and southeast experienced flooding and reported tennis ball sized hail. I really don’t know what to make of it all, and I don’t put much stock in omens, but the passing of winter this year has been spectacular.

Daffodils and Narcissi bloom profusely in the cutting garden, and the greenhouse literally bulges with young spring plants awaiting their final transplanting into the garden. The propagators have been working overtime, and are currently populated by tomatoes, peppers, and second plantings of lettuces, cabbages, and greens. Hopefully, next week I will be able to till the garden plots, set the trellises, and plant garden peas. Potatoes are also in our future. About half of the plot will be grown in containers filled with straw, a little experiment I’ve contemplated for several years, but never gotten around to managing. Over the weekend, parsnips, turnips, kohlrabi, and beets should get their starts in the propagators. I’ll plant a few more than we can use, because the chickens seem to like them (but then the chickens seem to like about everything!)

Speaking of chickens, my beautiful flock of eight Speckled Sussex hens is now presenting me with six to seven eggs a day. They are overseen by Chanticleer, a monstrously mean, but dashingly handsome rooster of the same breed. Sussex hens tend to be pretty broody, so as the year advances, I’ll let one of the girls hatch out some chicks. We will keep two or three as replacements, and donate the rest to the Common Friars in Athens.

The pastures have greened considerably in the last two days, and as always, it is good to see our old horses, Princess and Squirt, enjoying their retirement. A bit more gaunt and swaybacked than when they were in their prime, they are ever present reminders of when this farm rang with the laughter of children on a daily basis. The place would not be the same without them.

The trees are beginning to show signs of life, and it won’t be long until I will be able to sit on the porch with a pipe and a wee dram and hear the buds pop open in the woods. Even as I write, the air is filled with the deafening chorus of a plethora of peeper frogs. Just a few years ago, we were afraid that we had lost them, but this year and last they are back in all of their spring glory.

Briarwood is a blessed place to be any time of the year, but especially as the winter turns to spring. It is in a very real way an icon of that Heavenly City, which will one day come down as a bride adorned for her husband. Here is balance and harmony, plenty and peace. I pray Rebecca and I might be good stewards of this place that all who come here might be drawn into relationship with the maker of it all.

As I pen my goodbyes tonight, the terriers are curled up at my feet. Faithful Pat is in the woods running game, which is what all old hounds are paid to do. Might we all so employ our instincts that the Great Architect and Creator of the Universe be ever glorified! Amen.