Suddenly Spring

......One of these days I have to get my photo on this thing. I have a good and even recent one taken by my friend Isobel, but I need to figure out how to move it around enough to make it accessible.

I've been meaning to write for three weeks now, but I suppose I've been waiting for spring (I think it was Garrison Keillor who once said Minnesota has five seasons: Winter, Ice-breakup, Waiting for Spring, Mosquito Season, and Fall). Here in New Mexico we don't have to consider Ice-breakup; instead, we have the Winter Dries. After those record warm days in the last week of January, we went back to reality, meaning highs in the 40s-50s and lows in the low to mid teens. There were tiny red noses poking out of the ground in some of the beds for weeks, and I could commiserate--my nose was pretty red, too. But all of a sudden the past three days have been outrageously warm--I mean, one day the low was 15, and then the next morning it was 36!--and the highs have been 66-70. This is April weather, not February, and we've been setting temperature records all over the state (I apologize for those of you in the northeast, where you're having just the opposite). All those little noses popped up and became tulip leaves, now about four inches tall. The rabbits are very happy about that; evidently tulips are delicious. Yesterday morning I heard the first meadowlark saluting the rising sun with its lovely, happy song. Welcome, my little friend (not that the meadowlarks actually leave, but they stay pretty invisible all winter, and they don't sing then)!

The drawback to all this is that it's as dry as I can remember here. We haven't had any measureable moisture since early January, and that was only three inches of snow. I don't generally have to water the beds before March or April, but here I am with the hose, trying to provide enough water for the irises and garlic (and the tulips)to stay alive. Between the cold dry and now the warm dry, the soil is so dry that it has no cohesiveness, and when the wind blows, so does the soil. In the afternoons I can watch dust clouds rising thirty to forty miles away as the gusts drop off the Manzano Mountains. It's going to be a bad and very early fire season, though the volunteer fire people are ready. Still, there's a lot of country for a few fire guys to handle, so it could get to be a little exciting around here for the next few months. I'll let you know how it goes......

Imbolc, and the Waking of the Trees

It took me years and years to figure out why we have Groundhog Day. It was always obvious to me that no matter what the stupid groundhog thought he saw on this morning, it's still six weeks until the spring equinox, and therefore six weeks until spring. Isn't it? But the more time I spend on the farm, the more in tune I become with the natural cycle of each year, and I know why the old pagans (Pagan=Roman for "somebody living in the countryside") celebrated this time and gave it to the goddes Brigid.

February can be truly dismal, of course. But winter is beginning to loosen its grip, and a lot of the dismalness is due to the mud. Which we don't have here this year, as we're having a La Nina winter and spring. I know mud is happening elsewhere, though, as the snow and ice begin to melt, and the rivers begin to overflow their banks (another thing we never get to see here). Here, the little sparrows are suddenly filled with the urge to throw themselves into the air with all their friends and prospective lovers, twittering madly. The hens in the barnyard are starting to lay now, giving us the best eggs of the year (they really need that winter rest, so we do not give them any extra heat or light to force them to keep laying through the dark). And the hardiest of the native plants are showing a hint of green, the fringed sage in particular. It's a subtle grey-green, invisible to eyes that are attuned to emerald hues, but it's there, and it happens seemingly overnight at the end of January. But best of all, the trees are starting to wake.

I used to think of trees as passive, sporting leaves when it got warm and losing them when it got cold, and a lot of biology classes reinforce that idea. But the trees are awake a long time before they put out those first golden leaves of spring. In late January I become aware that the upper branches of many trees, like the willows and cottonwoods in the village of Galisteo north of here, begin swaying in the wind, not stiffly but with a live suppleness, and if you look closely, they are blushing with a gold just short of green. There will still be very cold weather for the next month or so, and we tend to get more snow in March than the rest of winter in a dry year, so they are not foolish enough to put out those tender leaves yet, but they are thinking about it. The buds are visibly bigger, pointy on the cottonwoods and small, round, and black on the Siberian elms (okay, those are the flower buds, but same idea).

So welcome the first inklings of Spring! Light a candle for Brigid and go gather eggs. Myself, I celebrate by pruning the apple trees, reminding them that this year they are supposed to produce fruit!

I prune conservatively; I know the rule about "leave enough space to throw a cow through the branches," but hey, I can't even pick up a cow.