Looking at nothing

I sometimes find myself amused at what Jed might think I actually do when I get my "garden" time; I seem to walk around and look at the ground, plants, trees, grasses, seeds, and sometimes I just seem to be looking at nothing. I was thinking about this yesterday as I walked around the homestead. I was lucky enough at my work to be stationed really close to home and thus there are some nights that I actually arrive home fairly early (around 5:15pm) and so I get to play while there is sunlight.

Yesterday I was able to check on all the trees to see how they are all doing. I find that one of the female pistachios has a ton of potential nuts while the other (closest to the coop) is just barely waking up. Pistachios have a tendency to fruit biannually and so I'm checking to see if my calculations for the previous years will show that we have fruit from the trees on alternating years so that we have pistachios every year rather than a huge harvest one year and none on the next. I check to make sure none of the birds have gotten into any of the new trees and that there aren't any nests in the new plants. I touch the ground to see how much moisture it has, how warm it is, if there are active worms in there, if the seeds are germinating, if I need to add additional mulch, and many other things.

Yesterday I walked around with a turkey egg in my hand while looking at the trees. The feel let me know that they had enough calcium and maybe just a little extra. The shell was hard with extra little calcium deposits on it. The coloring is nice and the shape is fair. It tells me that I might need to provide a little more water for the birds to drink. It also tells me that the turkeys are laying a little later than previous years, which makes me want to add a tom to our flock as soon as possible.

I look out at the grasses to see where bacteria is active the most (around the trees) and where I need to let the sheep roam. It tells me where we have a tendency to walk and where I could use a little bit more help with the soil.

I stare out at nothing to get the feel of the whole place, to see the cows and sheep interacting and how the place will look in another 5 years when the trees are all in production. How the sheep and cows will move around the trees and what I can do to keep the animals from devistating the orchard while enjoying its benefits. I imagine the tall canopies of the trees and the grape vines all along the borded, the berry bushes covering some trouble spots and the stream just a little bit deeper, the strawberries flourishing in the back and the fruit production all around. I guess I look into my perception of the future of the homestead as well as the present and compare it with the past. All those images amaze me and fill me with joy to think of what the future holds.