Growing things

Walking out in the woods today I saw so may of these reindeer moss areas. These small light mosses lie on the forest floor to delight the eye. When the day is moist they are soft, but when it is dry they are brittle and you might think they would blow away.
I often take my mini walks to areas close to our house and I am coming to know the territory. I know where the reindeer moss grows, where the cardinals nest, where the tortoises and black racers have buried their eggs, where the turkeys have sex in the morning, and where the cranes dance their loud trumpeting love calls.
But nothing here engages me more than the daily tending to the gardens. Even in winter with the constant possibility of frost, we have an amazing vegetable garden. Daily, I announce to Andy, the cook, that we have collards, broccoli, lettuce and green onions. That's it for now. And that's what we eat every night. Up north they don't even have that!
The winter garden is neat and productive, everything carefully mulched with hay. I have ordered the spring seeds and look forward to those warm weather vegetables, the tomatoes and peppers and beans, squash and eggplants. But for now, I love those verdant greens.
For the last ten days we have been dog sitting my daughter's two dogs. One is a very large and beautiful black and white pointer mix, and the other is a four pound teacup poodle. Our own dog is a small wiener dog. The visiting dogs are totally neurotic and want to follow us everywhere and the tiny poodle has no sense of being house trained and is so bony and icky one wouldn't love to touch her. And she has an incredibly shrill and sharp voice! The visiting dogs are 'door bounders' and bark at everything. We are exhausted with all this. I say to them, "Get a life!" But their life is us. I cannot wait for them to be reclaimed by my daughter. Still, I do love animals, and I like to take the big dog out with me on my forays into the woods and fields. But I cannot wait to be just us, the family of two with one small dog who doesn't bark much (except at armadillos) and has a life that doesn't include following us everywhere.
Dogs or no, this is an incredible place! This evening I saw four deer under the feeder, the sand hill crane couple dancing, a turkey gobbler showing his stuff, gobbling (and still jumping on the female), and so many cardinals at the porch feeder, I can't count them. Venus is the brightest light in the sky and Orion shines bright. This feels perfect.