Yep, it's finally here

Last weekend my friend and I picked up a truckload of horseshit, spread it on the garden, tilled it in, and planted three pounds of onion sets. Also planted raspberries. Today, there are just a few onion shoots showing, and buds are swelling on three or four of the raspberries. I'm going to sow a third of a row of lettuce later today and maybe plant peas. Meanwhile the tender crops will get started in the greenhouse.

Buds are swelling on the fruit trees, the briars in the woods are already green, and I'm giving it a week before we start to see the beech trees come alive. I never quite trust it, somehow, but it comes.

I need to make sure I find the energy this year to make the most of spring and summer. I have to do it in two places, maybe three, for two or three people. -- the possible third being my mother, but she may be okay without too much intervention from me. We'll see. Anyway, I'm psyched to make a little bit of the world better for people I care about. It's a great blessing to have that opportunity.

The never ending struggle . . .

lest the jungle reclaim it's own.

My neighbor owns a lot of forest. He has a long road -- a mile and half or so -- from his house to the swimming hole, which is an idyllic spot in the woods with a waterfall going over a dam. Spring weather has come at last and the mud has dried so it was time to clear the trees that had fallen across the road in the storms of fall and winter. As you may recall, this included the most powerful northeast storm in recorded history, and as you might well imagine, there were a whole lot of very big trees lying across that road.

Three of us pushed down it from barrier to barrier, wielding chainsaws and using my tractor to push the big trunks off to the side. It took a good four hours and there's still a lot of work to move brush by hand and clean up the edges.

As I have mentioned before, I mow a pretty good sized clearing, right now I'd say it's about 2 1/2 acres. The fact is you can't stand still -- I have to keep pushing back the edges or the forest will come in on me, thorn bushes and beech saplings in the vanguard. No road in the forest will stay passable for more than a year without fairly serious attention. We hold nature to a draw with our petroleum fueled brush cutters, mowers, chain saws, and tractors. Our predecessors here wielded axes and scythes and two-man crosscut saws and used horses for the heavy traction. Of course they had to feed the horses which meant keeping three or four times as much land open. I don't know how they did it.

The Indians, on the other hand, didn't bother. They'd girdle some trees and burn the underbrush to make small clearings for gardens, cultivate them for a year or two, and move on. Maybe not such a bad way to go after all.

At last . . .

The snow has mostly disappeared (except from where the humans piled it up), the ground has thawed, at least to some depth (though I haven't stuck a pick in yet), the garlic has awakened, and the buds are swelling. No real greening of the grass yet, but I'll let you know.

Yesterday when I got up I saw a big buck walking through the woods. He had some sort of a tumor on his left rear leg and a noticeable limp. Just a reminder that wild animals don't have doctors and stuff like that, which would probably be a minor problem for us today, will kill them. Since he doesn't have to worry about wolves and mountain lions nowadays, maybe it's something he can live with for a while, I don't know. But in the end, for most sentient creatures, it's a hard way to go.

What this country needs is a better class of groundhog

With cabin fever getting the better of me, I took a walk around the farm to look for any signs of greening in this chilly spring. So far, sadly, I didn't see much. The snow is gone from the sunniest flat and south facing ground, but it's still pretty thick in the woods. Down in my field, there's a pretty benign weed -- I don't know the name of it -- tiny, shallow rooted plants that just hug the ground. They stay green, and manage to very slowly spread, right till the ground freezes, and they take advantage of even a superficial thaw to perk up. They're looking alive, obviously, along with some patchy bunch grass in the very sunniest places. My irises are showing the tiny tops of blades poking above the ground.

That's about it. The garlic is dormant, the tree buds aren't swelling, the earth is still pretty much asleep. The prognosticators aren't encouraging either -- the rotten bastards are talking about snow on Monday. But I'll keep looking. It's time for plants to start happening.

The seasons

It's just arbitrary that we call the first day after the vernal equinox the first day of spring. In fact, it's pretty much arbitrary that we mark the equinox at all. If we didn't have clocks and clear horizons, we wouldn't even notice that it's 12 hours from sunrise to sunset. Today, in much of the country, winter weather is long gone, whereas elsewhere, including here, it's still with us.

Last year, to the extent we had winter at all, it was over by now. That was bad -- the warm dry spring left the soil deprived of deep moisture, and it never really recovered. The fruit trees bloomed early, only to be nipped by an April frost. The wooly adelgids came back on the hemlocks. Many towns had to restrict water use later in the summer.

This year, the vernal pools are full, mud season is properly muddy, the sap is running by day and stopping by night, all as it should be. Yes, it's annoying to your humble and obedient servant to still be chilly and hauling in wood and hemmed in by snowy ground; but when the time comes, my garden will jump and my trees will be heavy with fruit. The hemlocks will be green and the grass swarming with crickets and toads, much to the joy of the birds. And I'm getting solar gain already at 7:30 in the morning, so that part is happening no matter the temperature. I can't complain, or I shouldn't, even if I do.

Oh For Chrissake

I got home from work the other day to find that some deranged fanatic had driven the 3/8 of a mile up my driveway hoping to find someone to harangue with nonsense. Thank God, so to speak, I was not home, so instead I found a piece of literature wedged in my door.

"Jesus Christ is widely recognized as the greatest man who ever lived. Yet, he surrendered his life for us 1,980 years ago."

That's kind of a strange statement. According to the story I heard, he did not in fact surrender his life, he was just faking it, and three days later he was bopping around having fun surprising people. Since then, he's made occasional appearances on toast. As far as who may be the greatest man who ever lived, I suppose that's a matter of personal taste, but this particular dude, according to those who consider him the greatest man who ever lived, spent many centuries after his fake death communicating telepathically with people and ordering them to burn people alive who don't hold the proper beliefs about him. Nothing too great about that, in my view.

Also, he certainly didn't die for me, nor for my sins. I didn't even exist at the time, so I had not committed any sins. As for the sins I've committed since, I do not wish anybody to die for them, thank you. I do not feel it would be helpful. On the contrary.

If you ask me what I believe, I'll be happy to tell you. I believe that we do best when we figure out how the universe works by using our senses and our reason; and that whatever stories we tell ourselves ought to be both internally consistent, and consistent with observable reality. This whole Jesus story, on both grounds, is preposterous.

However, I don't go onto strangers' property uninvited in order to confront them with these -- I won't even say beliefs, I'll say obvious observations. That would be pointless, highly obnoxious, arrogant and would quite possibly get me arrested for trespassing. Just sayin'.

Is our critters learning?

A few days ago I looked out the window, morning coffee in hand, and beheld a line of deer walking through the woods -- seven of them. They kept a strictly orderly single file, as they will sometimes do when there is snow on the ground. As they came to my driveway, each would stop, look solemnly first right and then left, before proceeding across and up the hill toward the ridge.

This is truly new. The motor vehicle is undoubtedly their most important predator; now it looks as though they've been watching public service announcements on kiddie TV about safely crossing the street. I have also noticed that the squirrels no longer dance suicidally in the road before attempting to throw themselves under my tires -- they run straight across. Whether this is cultural learning or evolved behavior I do not know; it's taken what, 80 years? But they seem to be getting it.

Has anyone else noticed this?