I thought these marks on the wall under our porch were mud splashes until I looked closer and found them to be spiderlings (Araneus…?) bunched up together.

Although we are willing hosts to these, for the first time in many years we have no martins nesting in the eaves nor swallows in the back of our garage. In fact only one sighting so far this year of either of these birds passing overhead when there have been several flying around daily in past years.

They may be late arriving, and the warmer southern winds that are now blowing may bring them. We will certainly miss them if they don’t come.

If sitting in a garden listening
to a blackbird singing
were all that there was,

it would be enough!

I’ve just heard the news that the poet Ruth Bidgood died on March 4th in her hundreth year. I remember going to a reading by her when she was ninety and wrote about it HERE

My review of Symbols of Plenty containing her Hymn to Ffraid is HERE

Hers was a life well lived with poems well written.