Change is Coming


It’s been a good week for change. Counting down in Iraq, counting down at Guantanamo, putting a stop to torture. Counting down also in my garden and orchard.

It’s not as obvious here as it is in Washington. No “Hail to the Chief” and so on; nothing visible so far. We’ve been blanketed under snow for at least a month and the weather people see nothing different for the next eight days at least. But that’s as it should be. Change is coming nonetheless. Yes, it is!

We can see the brighter sun and longer days already. And down underneath it all, roots are reaching further down and beginning to draw up the sap that will be running underneath the bark before much longer. I’m getting the sap buckets organized. In two or three more weeks there’ll come a run of days with temperatures above freezing during the day and below freezing at night and the sap will begin to rise and it will be time to begin the new season.

I’ve placed my seed orders. That comes next. Syrup time, planting time, weeding time, harvest time. Orderly change. The pictures posted here will be available only a little longer. In a few weeks the garden will be brown with freshly tilled soil and there will be green lines where the first crops are coming up. The orchard trees will replace the bare branches with blossoms and leaves. Yes, they will!

Change is coming. I hope the changes in Washington will be as fruitful as those in my sugar bush, garden, and orchard.

2 Comments

AnonymousJanuary 26th, 2009 at 8:24 am

I’ve been reading your “Give Us Grace” and am amazed to find that Francis Sayre Jr. died in 1978. Who was that imposter who died at Martha’s Vineyard at age 93 last year?

ChrisJanuary 27th, 2009 at 8:31 am

That book suffered from very bad copy editing and includes other errors as well. If you buy up the existing copies, necessitating a second edition, we might get it fixed!

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