Landmarks. For the first time in five years, Paula suggested we go out and buy something together for the farm. (Usually it’s my job to spend money on the farm.) We were sitting on the porch and she said old farmhoses ought to have lilac bushes. I had not noticed that almost all of the old farmhouses had lilacs, but ours did not.

So we went to the Mandy Spring Nursery in Granville and bought five lilac bushes, Common Purple and Jolley’s. When she wasn’t looking, I bought a birch for the front yard. The farm is getting to her. So I started researching lilacs all night and came across Walt Whitman’s famous mention of lilacs in his ode to Lincoln, “When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d, And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night, I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring,” from “Memories of President Lincoln.” Later, I also learned Jefferson planted lilacs, not native to America, and noted it in his farm and garden journal. So did George Washington. So am I. What good company.

Also I have finally cleared all the winter manure out of the sheep, donkey and cow pastures. Tons and tons of it. I now have much to tractor out into the woods, and I thank Willie Nelson, Van Morrison, Feist and Amy Winehouse – and how could I forget Aretha – for their music played on my tractor CD player while hauling the farm’s primary export. (Once a boomer, always a boomer, I guess).

Today was the most beautiful day of the year – sunny, clear, with a great breeze. My next obsession – filling up the silo garden. Which I call the Victory Garden in honor of surviving my first winter on the farm. Paula and I and Anthony and Holly went to see Pirates of the Caribbean. Long.