‘Peter Pan thinks it’s magic,’ Silky Josephine says of a particularly wondrous stone they have found on our walk. ‘But I don’t believe it.’ 
     ‘Why not?’ I ask her, turning the stone over in my palm. 
    River-rounded, it’s the color of caramel and cream, smooth and slightly egg-shaped, with an odd translucence that makes it seem to glow, makes me wonder if I should hold it to my ear in some quieter place and listen, deeply, for a voice perhaps, a song. 
     ‘Because it doesn’t do anything,’ Silky replies. ‘It doesn’t fly. It doesn’t float. Nothing.’ 
     ‘Well,’ I say, ‘It’s a tricky business, to get a Magical Thing to do the magical things that it does,’ and I hold the stone up to the Sun, where its caramel glow fills red with the setting.
     ‘How magical do you think that sunsets would be', I ask, 'if the Sun were to be thrown into a roadbed and driven over, day after day, all of its efforts unnoticed?’ 
     Peter Pan and Silky Josephine love both sunrises and sunsets tremendously and look horribly saddened by the thought of them being driven over and forgotten in the gravel of some lonely road. Too saddened to speak. 
     ‘Exactly,’ I say, handing Peter Pan back the stone. 
    ‘Watch Silky. Give it a little attention and see how its magic grows.’

‘Can I help?’ Silky Josephine asks. 
    Eighteen days are up, and it’s time to remove our incubating eggs from the cradles of their mechanical turner. 
     We’ll add a dash of water to the incubator and replace them in a cluster, points down, as near to nest-like as possible. 
     Silky can be very gentle when it comes to picking things up, but putting things down has always been another issue entirely. 
    ‘How about you make sure that I have the pointiest ends facing downward,’ I tell her. ‘It’s hard for me to tell which is which, and it’s very important that we be right about it.’ 
      And it is. 
     And like a good mother ...not a hen, but a good mother ...Silky Josephine nudges and nuzzles her babies until they are cozy close, their points all perfectly facing downward, ready to hatch.

It’s pointless, trying to count the pale green and peach flowers that have bloomed on the Bumblebee Tree. Pointless too, trying to count the bees, who, one or sometimes two at a time, are at work on the flowers, collecting all that is sweet at their centers. 
     It’s best to just say there are thousands upon thousands, take hold of a low branch, swing up and climb through the middle, high, perch among the flowers and the bees, close your eyes and imagine you are in a Keeper’s skep, perhaps the Queen, and all around you the drone of your hive, your Kingdom, deafening, alive and busy. 

                                                        

‘Eleven more days,’ Silky Josephine says, peering through the incubator’s little window at the eggs we have placed there to hatch. One dozen. Eleven brown and one green. 
     Silky has them all named. 
    ‘How do you know which are boys and which are girls?’ I asked her, when she was in the process of dubbing the twelve warmed eggs. 
     ‘I sniff them,’ she said. ‘How else do you know a boy from a girl?’ 
    And I could do nothing but smile, and say, ‘I love you, Josephine,’ and kiss the top of her silky black head, because how else, really, can a question like that be answered.

‘Would you look at her,’ Priscilla says of Silky Josephine. ‘Thin as a whip.’ 
     Last year, if you recall, Silky had a bit of a growth spurt. Not upwards or lengthwise, but roundwise—her girth. 
     We passed it off as baby fat for a while and then tried to put the blame on an imbalance, but it wound up being the hand that fed her who was responsible, going a little heavy on the treats and helpings. 
     Silky Josephine is a stocky girl. Other than her legs and tail, no part of her anatomy will ever be ‘thin as a whip’, as Priscilla said, but there’s a curve to her belly now that matches the ‘healthy dog’ images at her doctor’s office, and I thank Priscilla for noticing. 
     ‘Is the box okay?’ I ask her as she swoops by again. 
   Silky’s size was not the only thing that changed in Priscilla’s absence. The patio where she has always nested was screened in over the winter. I built a box beneath the patio’s eaves, safe from wind and rain, but without Priscilla there to consult, was really only able to guess at what might meet her nesting needs. 
     ‘Perfect,’ she says in a hover. ‘We’re mudding it now.’ 
     And off like a bullet she flies to meet Carl, already in the air above the meadow green. 

Blink, blink, blink, go little Peter Pan’s eyes whenever we come to the door ...squinty, wincey, blinks ...because Peter Pan is always second in line, second behind Silky Josephine and her whip of a tail going swishety, swish, swish, swash.

‘Why is there a hole in the bottom of this tree,’ Silky Josephine asks. 
     Three tall pines stand between our house and the pasture, the only pines for miles. The hole Silky is asking about is more of a tunnel at the base of the centermost and tallest of the three trees, large enough for at least the back half of her to pass through, if she shimmied. 
     ‘Lightning,’ I tell her, and Silky’s eyes widen. 
     ‘When?’ she asks. 
     ‘On an Easter Sunday, just like today, a long time ago,’ I reply. 
     And I tell her of that first Easter Sunday on the Farm, of how the storm came and the lightning struck the pines, up one and down the others, and how it chased into the house and struck the oven where the Easter ham was cooking, and how my ears rang for days with the crash of it, and how everyone said the trees would soon die and should be cut down, and how I couldn’t cut them down, and they didn’t die, and how on Easter Sundays I won’t use the oven and am a little more nervous than usual, because it seems there is always a storm then. 
     ‘Always?’ Silky asks, and in the distance, we hear the low rumble of thunder. 
     ‘Always,’ I say.




  

‘They’re back early,’ I hear Agatha say behind me. 

     She is perched in the lilac, a rare moment of still, her rust feathers and speckled underbelly oddly suited to the lavender and hunter green. 

     ‘I was thinking that very same thing,’ I say, and Agatha’s amber eye gleams with smile. She prides herself in being first to voice a thought. 

     Priscilla and Carl have returned. My guess would be three weeks earlier than last year. Maybe the flying was good. Maybe they received word of our mild winter. I’ll ask later when they’ve settled in. 

     Agatha and I watch them dart and titter over the new cut pasture, fresh as if they’d flown in from the farm down the road and not from who knows how many hundreds of miles away. 

     ‘You’d think they’d want to rest a bit after coming all that way,’ Agatha says.

     And I nod to let her know she has beat me to the punch again ...said exactly what was on my mind ...and in the lilac I know her eyes are diamonds.

A three-day stretch of warmth and it’s cold again this morning. 
     ‘Which Winter is this?’ Silky Josephine asks, shivering. 
     We have five little Winters here after Winter. Spring cold snaps, four of which magically correlate with the blooming of the Redbuds, the Dogwoods, the Locust trees and the Blackberries. In that order. 
     The fifth, there were no blossoms for, and so was called, Wooly Britches, or just plain Wooly, as you will need something woolen and warm to wear, which hopefully you haven’t already stowed away. 
     The Redbuds, Silky’s favorite because they are pinkish, have already blossomed, as have the Dogwoods, again Silky’s favorite for obvious reasons. 
     ‘It’s Locust Winter,’ I tell her, which sadly we don’t have many of, Black Locust, for their bushels upon bushels of glorious white blossoms produce a scent that should not be reduced by words, but rather drawn in deeply and held near to the heart, for you will recognize it again at Heaven’s own gates. 
     ‘Locust Winter,’ Silky repeats, for she is committing in their proper order the five little Winters after Winter to memory. 
     ‘Yes’, I tell her. ‘Black Locust. There’s a grove down the road. We’ll go there later, if you’d like, when the sun has warmed the flowers.’ 
     And those eyes, so wide and so bright, I don’t need for her to answer.

Silky Josephine, Peter Pan, Harley and I are out on the High Hill, watching the much-talked-about, but not at all pink full moon in snatches through dark and racing clouds. 
     ‘Why is it called a Pink Moon, if it’s not really pink?’ Silky asks.
     She's been dreadfully concerned lately with the science and facts and general workings of things, big and small. 
     ‘It was named the Pink Moon a long time ago,' I tell Silky, 'after a pink flower that blooms this time of year, a phlox, Subulata. We can look it up in your flower book later, if you’d like.’ 
    Silky nods. And for a while we watch the full moon in silence until, ‘Pink would have been nice though,’ she says. ‘I like pink.’

'I think I'm allergic to sunshine,' Silky Josephine tells me this morning. 'Peter Pan is too,' she says, and Pete nods vigorously, his little piglet ears flapping like little piglet wings ...winglets.  

'How's that?' I ask, setting their breakfast down in front of them. 

'It makes us sleepy,' Silky explains. 

I nod. 'A clear sign,' I say. 'You're definitely allergic to sunshine.' 

Silky, possibly not expecting me to so readily agree with her, looks worried, but not nearly as worried as Peter Pan, who looks absolutely stricken with fret. 

'Is there a cure?' Silky asks. 

'There is,' I say, and Silky sighs with relief. Peter Pan, however, has had a cure or two that was, if not, as unbearable as the predicament, nearly so, and has shifted his worry in that direction, shaking now visibly, his breakfast untouched. 

'What is it?' Silky asks, 'The cure?' 

'Sunshine,' I tell her, because it's true. 'The only cure for a sunshine allergy, is more sunshine,' I say, 'Lay in it, roll in it, run in it, play in it. You'll be fine in no time at all.' 

And even Peter Pan, worrisome as he is, likes the sound of this.           

   

‘My tummy hurts,’ Silk Josephine tells me this morning.

‘Mmm hmm,’ I say. ‘I bet it does.’ 

‘Why?’ She moans. 

‘Remember what you ate last night on our walk?’ 

‘No.’ 

‘The cat poop?’ 

Silky doesn’t recall. 

‘How about the rabbit poop, the deer poop or the raccoon’s?’ I ask. 

‘No’ Silk says, shaking her head. ‘I don’t remember.’ 

‘Well your tummy does,’ I say, and from somewhere inside of Silky there comes a rumble and then a squeak. 

Silky groans. 

‘I’ll get you some rice. But tonight, how about we pass on the trail snacks. Okay?’ 

‘Okay,' she says. 'Will you help me to remember though?’

‘I will, Josie. I will.’