A Brief Respite From Winter

Well, we had a thaw, and the Spring Enthusiasm burst forth everywhere! OK, maybe it was just me. We were able to finally get my wife's car out of the driveway for the first time since the big snow last month, and there are subtle, perhaps delusional changes starting. The willows are starting to show just a smidgen of deeper yellow in their gold brown fronds, and there is a bit of reddening starting in the tiny maple twigs. Although I keep looking, that new green tinge has yet to start in my grass, but I'll keep looking anyway.

I spent some time getting my pruning tools together and ready. My orchard trees got missed for several years because of general life interruptions, and now some are at a ridiculous height with shapes to match. I prefer more frequent, smaller pruning, but these are out of hand. They are a mix of standard size trees and semi-dwarf sizes. I am often torn between planting smaller trees for quicker bearing and easier maintenance, or planting standard trees that will be here long after I am gone.

Growing up in the country, we would often find ancient fruit trees standing sentinel deep in the woods, the only sign of the long abandoned home that once stood there. Their flavor was unequaled by any modern varieties, at least in my memory.

As I work, the Snowbirds flit around me, wary but unafraid. My mom called them "Juncos", and I reckon that might be their proper name, but to me they represent the winter, arriving just before the snows start and leaving just shortly afterwards. So to me they are Snowbirds. I do not know where they go in the summer, but if our winter is preferable then I am happy to have them around.

I remember when I was very small, going with my mother and grandmother to seek out specific old apple trees, in out of the way places. Those trees were familiar to my grandmother from her childhood. She had been gathering apples here since she was young. Occasionally she would quietly gesture toward some stone or other part of the overgrown landscape with the cut off broomstick she used to steady herself. Her eyes would seem to be looking far away, for just a moment, then...

We would gather bushel baskets full, and when the baskets were full, we would fill paper A&P bags, "pokes" Grandma called them. Mom and Grandma would put up applesauce and apple butter for the winter. The untended trees still providing a bounty to any who remembered, long after most had forgotten them.

Nearly six decades have passed and many miles keep me from checking on those old trees. “Il faut cultiver notre jardin.” * Those old sharecropper plots are not even discernible on Google Maps or other satellite views. I wonder if my trees will be long remembered even after my work here has been forgotten.

And now it is snowing again.

Thanks for Listening,

Dave

*We must tend our own garden," - Voltaire, Candide