This Month's Story
“What?”
“That we were to wait.”
“He said by the tree. (They look at the tree.)…”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know. A willow.”
“Where are the leaves?”
“It must be dead.”
“No more weeping.”
“Or perhaps it’s not the season.”
“Looks to me more like a bush.”
“A shrub.”
“A bush.”…
Samuel Becket, Act 1, WAITING FOR GODOT
“Did you get the Mail?”
Stella is doing something at the stove and I put the mail on the kitchen table. It’s a big table made by an Amish friend in Smicksburg and, by using its built expansion track, I can expand it to seat 10. Now it set to seat 5, which is more than big enough for Stella and me.
Stella wipes her hands and joins me at the other side of the table. She quickly rifles through the regular mail (bills from Verizon, Allegheny Power, etc.) and then the catalogues.
She’s unhappy.
“No Burpee!”
Notice that she did not ask ‘If we got mail?’, just ‘Did I get the mail?’.
This time of year there is always mail and that mail is 80% catalogues and all of these 80% are either seed, plants, or some type of garden catalog. But amid this deluge, Stella has her favorites and I gathered from her remark, that one of her particular favorite has not arrived.
I watch as she rummages through the rest of the catalogues. She’s happy. I get up and go to my recliner in the raised corner of the kitchen and look out the two big windows. It’s not a cheerful view, gray threatening skies, wet fields and remnants of snow everywhere.
Looking down the hill that stretches down from the house to the near-frozen pond, I see just a few broad snow patches. Although half the pond is frozen, the center is clear (we have an aerator) and that central bit of water is being puckered by a drizzling rain.
It wasn’t raining yesterday when I walked with Holly along the top of the hill bordering the near field. We were looking for the season’s first indication of jonquils. I was more than a little early, but I was hopeful. Holly didn’t care if we saw early flowers or not, just the two of us walking outside gave him what he wanted.
Stella’s grandmother planted these flowers more than sixty years ago and somehow they’ve survived. The spring of each year finds the hill covered by scattered carpets of yellow jonquils. Stella tells me that they have never been fertilized, they have always been allowed to let grow and expand.
When we first came up here six years ago, there was much more. But since then I have begun a heavy my clearing of the hill; ridding it of wild grape vines, invasive roses, Dutchmen’s Pipe, poison ivy, etc. It wasn’t easy and took me a three years.
Now they are all gone and grass now replaces the invasives, a difficult thing to cut given the slope, but much nicer to see. During this time, the jonquils have had a chance to come back, repopulate much of the areas I cleared.
There are even patches of jonquils on that part of the hill that runs into the woods. Holly and I went there as part of our walk yesterday and found that there none were coming up there as well.
I guess we were too early.
As I sit in the recliner and watch the drizzle through the windows, I realize that Holly and I walked quite a bit yesterday. Now, with this gray and this rain, I’m glad we did. Holly’s good company and we enjoyed ourselves being free from the confining house.
Yesterday, most of the snow was gone and our walk encompassed a great deal of the farm. We spent some time looking over the expanded area where Stella and I plan to plant new fruit trees, berry bushes, and grape vines.
There’s a lot of work under the little patches of snow waiting to be done.
I would like Les to come in with his 2’ auger and dig holes for these plantings and their supporting posts and wires. But I hesitate. The ground is no longer frozen and his frontend loader would make the planting area a sea of mud. It will all grow back, but till then, we’ll see the tracks in the churned up ground where the machine backed, went forward, and turned about.
There is a large (about 15’) English Oak in the back area that I want to move and replant beside the Gazebo. I’m going to get Carol to come over next week and help me move it. It will be a lot of work and a bit chancy as to the tree surviving the move, but this is the best time of year to do this and I think we can do it.
There is a great deal of more work to be done, just the new fruit trees, berry bushes, and grape vines will take a week or more. Then there is the railing for the steps on the new patio in the back of the house. There is a gutter drain there, so it has to be done very carefully. I’ll get another Amish friend to help with it…
And so it goes.
With luck an early spring, but probably not.
