It's too early for outside Spring chores, but...

Most of the snow is melted. This is the time of year when we have a very strong urge to "get a jump" on whipping the yard into shape: clean up the leaves; collect and burn fallen branches; start trapping pocket gophers; etc. This is the time of year when we have to slow down; remember to let the soil drain and dry. Don't compact the soil by working on it too soon. It's way too early to plant anything outside. Just enjoy the early spring season. The yard work will still be there next month. Have you finished doing the taxes yet? Then, next week, when conditions may be conducive to flying a kite or practicing fly casting in the yard, you can reward yourself for finishing this season's inside chores.

maple buds beginning to swell

Photo by J. Harrington

It looks like the leaf buds on the maples in front of the house are beginning to swell. Warm days and cool to cold nights should be supporting a good run of maple sap in the sugarbush. We've noticed the squirrels are chasing each other around the oak trees. Mating season should be over by now so we suspect they're just celebrating Spring in their own way. If they're careful, they won't become lunch for returning hawks like the one we saw and heard heading North yesterday.

We seem to be recovering nicely from the effects of yesterday's second COVID-19 vaccine shot. We still have a sore left arm, but the rest of us appears to be coming along with no more aches and pains than our normal old age provides.

Goddess of Maple at Evening

Chard deNiord - 1952-

She breathed a chill that slowed the sap 
inside the phloem, stood perfectly still
inside the dark, then walked to a field 
where the distance crooned in a small 
blue voice how close it is, how the gravity 
of sky pulls you up like steam from the arch.
She sang along until the silence soloed 
in a northern wind, then headed back 
to the sugar stand and drank from a maple 
to thin her blood with the spirit of sap. 
To quicken its pace to the speed of sound 
then hear it boom inside her heart. 
To quicken her mind to the speed of light 
with another suck from the flooded tap.

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