The Dawn of Spring

The only one up in a darkened house, I walk through the dim halls softly. As the sun is still many hours off, and doors closed where the others still sleep. It is this time before dawn, that I love best, before the pace of the day quickens. And in the quiet of this time, though I cannot see them, I know they are there, beginning to stir--
waiting for the hush to be lifted.
For every thing I know and love,
for now, I must remember.


The brown outside is all around--still, lifeless and waiting.
The tiniest hint of green barely showing where flowers soon will be. Beyond the flattened grass of the lawn, the garden lies as a yawning space, dark soil on which to plant.
On the hill we wait.
A night of heavy rain has knocked out the power again.

I walk slowly out, across the soft, saturated ground, past resting fields of brown grasses. Moon covered deeply in clouds, my single light scanning broadly.
Am I the only one here?
I step carefully back, into the protection of the evergreens, through to the shallow pool where I know I will soon find them and peek quietly in.
Just below the surface, only ice.
They are not yet here.
But in this warm night air, I sense their stirring, salamanders waking, just below the surface, waiting for this hush to be lifted.
For every thing I know and love,
for now, I must remember.

Last spring I monitored 2 vernal pools on our property and found that 2 species of mole salamanders use them as breeding areas. I witnessed Spotted Salamanders, Ambystoma maculatum, migrating there at the end of March, but missed the Jefferson Salamander, Ambystoma jeffersonianum, migration weeks earlier. This year, I'm hoping to catch it.
It is not known exactly what triggers mole salamanders’ movement from underground, where they live and eat until hibernating through the winter, to these pools of their birth for breeding each spring. It is thought to be factors including ground and air temperature (a 3-day mean temperature above 42 degrees), loose water within the soil (from heavy spring rain), a reversal of the soil temperature profile (surface becomes warmer than subsurface) and darkness (clouded, moonless night). Jefferson Salamanders are known to walk through snow and enter pools as soon as ice melt opens an edge.

Drip, drip, drip...

Sugar Maple Leaves, frosted

Frosty Gravel Drive

The morning air has a chill.
A delicate lacy trim has been left on the maple leaves, now rusty brown and caught in the grass--left there last fall, and held by winter's snows.
Through the dark outlines of the trees, I can see patches of white, still scattered against the dim background of the woods.

Across the road, fog has settled into the lower fields.
And a pink sun slowly lights the landscape in what will be another cloudless sky.

Everything is just perfect—for sap.

Frozen drip on end of spile (spout)

Glaze of Ice in Sap Buckets

"Sugar weather," what maple syrup producers call the period in the spring characterized by freezing nights interspersed with mild, sunny days, varies geographically, and from year to year. And, for those who wait, drill in hand, to tap their trees, it is a season that is sensed, more than plotted on a thermometer or circled on the calendar. The heaviest cold has passed, and the thaw has begun. For a moment, the earth hesitates, poised at the cusp of spring.

Drip

Technically speaking, sap flow is dependent upon pressure--the relative difference between the pressure within the sapwood of the tree and the pressure of the atmosphere outside it.
It is believed, that, at temperatures below freezing, negative pressure develops within the wood, drawing liquid from the roots, into the tree. Then, as the dark bark of the tree is warmed by the sunshine of a mild spring day, the pressure inside the wood becomes greater than that outside. This positive pressure acts to press the sap out, through a taphole, if one has been drilled. That evening, if the thermometer dips below freezing, the cycle will begin again.
Because the flow is so dependent upon this daily rise and fall in temperature, the length of season may vary widely, and sometimes starts and stops, when temperatures hold steady, either as cold or warm.

Frosty Sugar Maple leaves in Grass

Beneath my feet, the ground has the softness of spring. And the promise of a clear day, will soon turn on this faucet.
Drip,
drip,
drip...

By sunset, the buckets will be full.

Sap dripping into bucket beneath tin lid

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Yin and Yang and Yowling

I’ve come to expect in everything, balance.
Spring rains that dissolve the crumbled earth of an autumn that was far too dry.
Abundant young from just 2 single birds that ensures their parents’ replacement.
And even, the night of rest that will follow sleeplessness, or, in this case, the reverse.

A cat yowled in the night beneath my window.
And, more than the interruption of my sleep by its crying, was the intrusion of tangled thoughts that followed until dawn.
What does one do with that cat?

Lily on upstairs porch

Lily came to us 2 years ago, a small, young cat, slinking from under the garage doors one spring, as we stood in the driveway talking with friends. Starved of attention and food, within minutes, she charmed us into loving her for life. By the time she was spayed and settled into our room upstairs, Lily had already crossed paths with a male--his kittens, not to be in her future.

Kittens beneath barn floor

The next spring brought yet another young cat.
This time, to our barn, and this time already with 5 tiny kittens that soon became motherless and were raised… in our room upstairs.
Now, four, Max, Alex, Olivia, and Lucy have become ours, all spayed or neutered and content to join Lily as indoor cats.

Upsetting, it must have been, in the quiet of a dark night, to the five cats roused from their peaceful sleeping amidst the human lumps beneath the bedcovers, to hear this stranger’s yowling outside.
But not half as unsettling as it was to the lump beneath them, who wonders, “What does one do with that cat?”

Sugaring, this year.

You can almost sense it.
The rush of water is all around.

Across the drive, the creek has overrun its banks--surging through the broad, low fields, large ice masses bobbing in frothy brown.
Most of last week’s snow has melted leaving the tired, green ground soft beneath it.
And on the pond, 2 inches of cold, clear water stands in puddles on the dark, soft surface of the ice.

The last two summers have been hard on the trees.
Heat and drought have stressed them badly, our Sugar Maples barely holding leaves through a parched fall.
But, autumn rains restore, and through winter days they have rested, hopefully with us, still.

"Tapping the Trees"
Drilling holes, slightly downward
Hammering in Tap (spout)

The feel of this quiet, warm day is right.
Sun shining brightly against the trunks,
carefully, the first hole is drilled.
A clear drop eagerly rushes forth, then another and another.
Until they fall in a stream, cool and clean.


And, with each drop safely collected and stored, this year, once again, we will make syrup--
the golden gift of spring.

The first drips of sap into bucket

More of this process to follow!

Walking the Silver Spoon

Winter Porch

I miss the world outdoors,
in the way I knew it on warmer days.
The trails I walked, their hills and curves—
like tracing the bend of a spoon, turning it, over and over again, in my hand.
Even in stillness, without birds or bugs or blooms to discover,
the constancy of the walk I found very settling.
There is comfort in the familiar.

Icy Trees through upstairs window

I sit indoors, now, by a crackling wood stove, birds scattered on the fresh, white snow beyond the window.
Around me, a wealth of things and the faces I love.
A cup of hot tea at my elbow.
Browsing the photographs of a warmer day's walk -- almost as if in real time.
But, still, there is something missing.

Something that I find, only in my walking,
leaving wealth and warmth behind.
So, I walk.

Winter Walk

Crossing Paths

Praying Mantis egg case waiting on icy stems

Praying Mantis, female
from summer field

From Beneath the Roses (SWF)

Ice melting at roof's edge

Snow—it comes and goes.
And, when you think you’ve caught that scent of spring on a passing breeze, you’re fooled.
Six weeks of winter, indeed.

Icicles, heavy on barn gutter

We wait beneath a freshly laid blanket, crisp and white.
But what the groundhog must have seen,
on that day, warm as April…
Can you imagine?

Close-ups taken beneath this Mulitflora Rose
all click to enlarge

See more Skywatch here.

Lost Cardinal

Snowy Dawn

Two lone feathers on shallow snow.
The birds have flown, much of the cold and ice now gone.

Morning Field

Northern Cardinal, Cardinalis cardinalis,
male above, female below

Of all who visit here on days filled with flakes and gray, I love the Cardinals best.
Their brightness through the snowy veil, striking.
The central stone others cluster around.


In the field beyond the yard, I found the tracks of a hawk,
touching down for just one step--and gone again.
His prey lifted, without a mark, to the air.
That he should strike with such precision assures me they felt nothing.

But still--
take them quickly, the pretty birds.

Cardinal feathers

Hawk talon prints in snow


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