In The Time Of The Crocus

All the electrical upgrades the inspector mens requested have been completed. I was more interested in a process with a bit more visual satisfaction despite having nothing to do with inspection and moved on to putting the first coat of the Molera Vaquero Red on the main girder downhill. It needs another coat, but already it is satisfyingly complete. Now I just need to paint the uphill girder and columns.



It has been a long week and after getting up before 7 every morning to wait all day for amorphous appointments, I just ran out of steam after the first coat and wandered off.

The new stone sculpture I am contemplating will be viewable from above. It keeps calling me and I keep getting closer to hauling boulders while the utility meadow is in its dead, brown and dormant phase and don't have to wade through a six foot high thicket of asters, elderberry and thorny blackberry thrown in for good measure.



Close to 4pm when I had given up, the phone man finally arrived. I almost have phone service. They ran the wire from two poles away to my pole, through the buried conduit and down to the cozy cabin. Now a lineman must turn something on to complete the connection.

I showed the phone man the entire layout from far pole to cabin including the utility grounding bar the inspector mens said I had to have and see that yellow tag. He grounded it to the main wire with his own clamp and didn't even use the grounding bar. Good grief. I better not hear anything about that when the inspector mens return. The conduit for his line rising from the ground is crooked too. That annoys me and I will have to straighten it.

It's a good thing I choose grey as the cabin's color.



Last year at this time the mountain was still swirling with snow. The crocus were a distant hope. These freezing mornings with warmish sunny days have allowed all kinds of activity that would have had to wait last year.

The crocus are blooming a good three weeks earlier. I will never figure out what a normal year is this way.



There are plenty more crocus than when I first arrived some three and a half years ago. More is Bulbarella's goal. Between modest annual purchases, natural multiplication and seeding, more happens.





These crocus were not planted this way. They did it on their own. With some regular cleansing of the tall dead wild you can actually see them.



'Harmony' still blooms a good month before last year. You have to take their pictures when you can. In this warmish they will fade away and the next wave of bloom will arrive.



Now is the time of the crocus.