Last day of April

Burning brush pile in Proctor. Boats on trailers. Young couple walking a baby in a stroller. High school baseball game in Brandon.

spring flood

The same logic that causes big rivers always to flow past big cities causes cheap farms sometimes to be marooned by spring floods. Ours is a cheap farm, and sometimes when we visit it in April we get marooned...The enthusiasm of geese for high water is a subtle thing, and might be overlooked by those unfamiliar with goose-gossip, but the enthusiasm of carp is obvious and unmistakable. No sooner has the rising flood wetted the grass roots than here they come, rooting and wallowing with the prodigious zest of pigs turned out to pasture, flashing red tails and yellow bellies, cruising the wagon tracks and cow-paths and shaking the reeds and bushes in their haste to explore what to them is an expanding universe...

There are degrees and kinds of solitude. An island in a lake has one kind; but lakes have boats, and there is always the chance that one might land to pay you a visit. A peak in the clouds has another kind; but most peaks have trails, and trails have tourists. I know of no solitude so secure as one guarded by a spring flood; nor do the geese, who have seen more kinds and degrees of aloneness than I have.

So we sit on our hill beside a new-blown basque, and watch the geese go by. I see our road dipping gently into the waters, and I conclude (with inner glee but exterior detachment) that the question of traffic, in or out, is for this day at least, debatable only among carp.

April
A Sand County Almanac
Aldo Leopold

sprouts

Out walking in East Aurora, New York. Bluets were everywhere.

These are like our Marsh Marigolds, but not exactly.

Oh, and these guys are sprouting up as well.

Finale

Away for a week. Wanted to finish this up.

But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future's sakes.

Two Tramps in Mud Time
Robert Frost

IV

The time when most I loved my task
The two must make me love it more
By coming with what they came to ask.
You'd think I never had felt before
The weight of an ax-head poised aloft,
The grip of earth on outspread feet,
The life of muscles rocking soft
And smooth and moist in vernal heat.

Out of the wood two hulking tramps
(From sleeping God knows where last night,
But not long since in the lumber camps).
They thought all chopping was theirs of right.
Men of the woods and lumberjacks,
They judged me by their appropriate tool.
Except as a fellow handled an ax
They had no way of knowing a fool.

Nothing on either side was said.
They knew they had but to stay their stay
And all their logic would fill my head:
As that I had no right to play
With what was another man's work for gain.
My right might be love but theirs was need.
And where the two exist in twain
Theirs was the better right--agreed.

III

The water for which we have to look
In summertime with a witching wand,
In every wheelrut's now a brook,
In every print of a hoof a pond.
Be glad of water, but don't forget
The lurking frost in the earth beneath
That will steal forth after the sun is set
And show on the water its crystal teeth.

Two Tramps in Mud Time
Robert Frost

TTIMT II

The sun was warm but the wind was chill,
You know how it is with an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You're one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over a sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak
And you're two months back in the middle of March.

A bluebird comes tenderly up to alight
And turns to the wind to unruffled a plume,
His song so pitched as not to excite
A single flower as yet to bloom,
It is snowing a flake: and he half knew
Winter was only playing possum,
Except in color he isn't blue.
But he wouldn't advise a thing to blossom.

Two Tramps in Mud Time
Robert Frost

Two Tramps in Mud Time

Out of the mud two strangers came
And caught me splitting wood in the yard
And one of them put me off my aim
By hailing cheerily "Hit them hard!"
I knew pretty well why he had dropped behind
And let the other go on a way.
I knew pretty well what he had in mind:
He wanted to take my job for pay.

Good blocks of oak it was I split,
As large around as the cutting block:
And every piece I squarely hit
Fell splinterless as a cloven rock.
The blows that a life of self control
Spares to strike for the common good,
That day, giving loose to my soul,
I spent on the unimportant wood...

Two Tramps in Mud Time
Robert Frost
to be continued...

late season snow

It snowed a little on Friday and again on Sunday. The robins were confused, and congregating on wet patches of ground where the snow was not sticking. Late season snows like this are called "poor man's fertilizer." They are called lots of other things, too.

turkeys in a field

Starry night, sky at sunrise the color of a robin's egg. Red winged blackbird in Proctor. Turkeys in a field in Charlotte. Without you, Doug, they wouldn't be there.

morning wind

Very windy yesterday and in to the evening. We lost power for the first time in a long time, and during the height of the storm we learned that the winds from the west brought a new family member! Ellen delivered this beautiful baby boy last night. They are still working out a few of the details, like a name. We are very happy!

The winds which passed over my dwelling were such as sweep over the ridges of mountains, bearing the broken strains, or celestial parts only, of terrestrial music. The morning wind forever blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted; but few are the ears that hear it.
Walden
Henry David Thoreau

migration

Over the weekend there was a sunny day with the wind blowing strongly from the south. I looked out in the back, probably checking my wood pile for the millionth time this year. and saw two large hawks circling over the hill in the back. Two turned into three, four, five, six. I realized I was watching a part of the spring migration of raptors back into the north country. In the fall, you still need sunny days, but the wind needs to blow from the north for movement to occur. The wind eases the journey southward for the raptors. The raptors also look for topography that provides strong thermal lift. Mount Philo is famous for that. I've seen dozens of raptors careening about the mountainside there on windy days there in the fall.
The hill behind our house lies at the northern end of the valley of Ira. Winds blowing from the south would provide that thermal lift needed for the spring migration. I'd never realized that about our place before.
As is often the case, I was filled with a sense of wonder. I pointed the hawks out to Allyn. Even she thought it was cool. There's the sense of observing something vast and mysterious, something much larger than the small self.

ready?

Otter Creek flooding in the usual places. The baseball season has started (not here). Coltsfoot, the first wildflower of the season appearing. Are you ready, Shawn?

south wind

South wind. You notice those things when you live in the north country. Sugaring activity has resumed after the cold stretch. Pickup trucks with sap collection bins in the back are busy running the roads. Lake Champlain profoundly blue on Saturday morning. People out raking the winter out of their yards and lawns. Car washes busy. I try to wash my car once or twice a year whether it needs it or not.