Mud, blossoms and mosquitoes

 It is late afternoon. The incessant call of the frog has been drifting up from the pond in front of the house all afternoon. I say ‘the frog’ as if I knew this frog personally, but while its voice has become very familiar by now I have not yet seen this furtive guest. Even though I have squatted by the side of the pond more than once, keeping as still as I could so as not to alarm it, my peering into the murky waters has netted no result. Let’s just say the voice sounds the same as it did last year, and every time I heard it this year, and since there is always but one voice I imagine it is always the same frog. 

Last night it occurred to me that it might not be a frog at all, but a toad. We have found toads here before, though not in the last few years. Thinking its call might give a clue to its identity I looked up ‘frog and toad calls in western Canada’ on the internet last night, but ended up being more confused than when I started. There are so many different calls, and it seems impossible to me to determine the identity of the pond dweller this way. It doesn’t really matter: it is just nice to listen to this song that sounds with renewed vigour after every rain. 

Things have changed tremendously since I wrote last. Then, I wondered half-jokingly if we would get one more snowfall in April. I should have known that this was no joking matter: after a nice week during which much of the old snow melted April 29^th brought us 20 cm of new snow to replenish what had been lost. Gravel roads, just dried and firmed up, once again became soft and difficult to manoeuvre, and we were now getting really anxious about the start of field work. 

Yet this country has the potential to surprise us, even after farming here for more than thirty years: by the end of that week, on the first weekend in May, we enjoyed daytime temperatures of +30 Celsius. That might well turn out to be the hottest day of the summer; not every year does the mercury climb that high. The night following this record breaker it dipped to barely above the freezing mark – stark reminder that we live in a place of extremes. 

It stayed nice and dry, thankfully, and since Magnus and Courtney, who live 40 kilometres northwest from here, had been spared the bulk of the last snowfall we were able to start field work there on the following Friday, May 10^th.

A few days later it was time to move closer to home, where it had dried up somewhat in the meantime. Conditions were far from ideal when we started applying fertilizer on the first field: areas close to the treed border were still wet, and water was standing in the low areas. Yet there was no time to wait anymore: canola and wheat needed to go in the ground if they were to reach maturity in time for harvest. 

As always in a wet spring it was a balancing act between getting as close as possible to the wet spots and avoiding to get stuck. That first evening,  possibly a bit careless after driving all day without getting into trouble, I misjudged and suddenly found the wheels of the tractor spinning in the mud. Unable to get out on my own I had to wait for the other four-wheel drive tractor to pull me out.

 

After this somewhat frustrating beginning things improved considerably, and we made good progress. All around us the world had burst into spring mode. White poplars were the first to leaf out, a slight hint of green at first, those few wonderful days of anticipation before the leaves unfold fully and it seems impossible that there could have been nothing but bare branches and long unsightly tufts of bleached, dry grass for months. 

It is such a nice time to be driving tractor! The greening hills in the distance, the foamy white blossoms of chokecherries and saskatoons along the hedgerows, the still water in the low areas reflecting clouds and the afterglow of yet another magnificent sunset, and leisure to watch this all day – all this certainly is ample reward for long days, fatigue and a sore back. 

Cabbage White feeding on chokecherry blossoms

And now all this, too, is past. A flock of waxwings gathered in the cherry tree in front of the kitchen window yesterday and eagerly ripped off petals, setting off a shower of white drifting to the ground, a lacy carpet that soon will turn brown. Now the lilac hedge is almost in full bloom, and Swallowtails dance from one nectar-laden cluster to the next, their pale yellow wings with their delicate black, blue and red pattern rarely ever totally still. 

We finished seeding last Friday, two weeks after we had started, just minutes before it started to rain. Strangely enough, the rain was already welcome: days of strong wind had dried out the top layer of soil, and this would ensure proper germination. 

Rain showers and thunderstorms have been part of every day ever since. Looking up from my place at the desk, now, half an hour after sunset, I count eighteen mosquitoes glued to the outside of the fly screen, longing to enter my room and, likely, sink their stingers into my skin to still their thirst for blood. No such luck! It’s enough that I have to contend with them when I am in the garden. My home, I inform them, is my castle – NO ENTRY FOR MOSQUITOES!