Green blues

Snowing this morning, woke to it, after hearing staticy taps on our bedroom window most of the morning which I thought bespoke sleet, ice, not snow. But snow it was, snow it is, drifty AND heavy, beautiful and disheartening at the same time. I'm a little sick of white, it's enough already, especially after a two-day tease of rain and temperatures in the 40's. Snow. Snow. Snow. And it's still coming down. Astrid, black as the snow is white, seems mezmerized by the steady fall outside our windows. She stares, still. She's been hanging around me a lot the past fews days, crying if a door is shut to her, up on my lap, communicating in a brief, heartbreaking whine. I can't tell whether she needs the attention and warmth or she intuitively knows that I need it, an extra bit of grounding on my lap when writing or meditating. I'm glad she's around, she's a treasure beyond worth.

My heart is in a yearning ache, an ache for something indescribable. Spring, green, growing things, something other than dormancy. And yet, this is what is, this snow, this white, this blank slate, this staying indoors, this reflection, this time to myself, this combatting of impatience, this attempting to be present. This this.

And breathe.

There's a hush hum from the refridgerator, a muffled tick of a clock in another room somewhere, reminding me of the wind up alarm clock we used to wrap in a towel and lay beside orphaned kittens to fool them into thinking it was their mother's heartbeat; an infrequent and soft metal clank from the jotul wood stove as it stretches its kinks out. And what sound does the snow make? It's anti-sound, the opposite of sound, falling, falling, a muffler to all other sound. Sometimes you can hear it land, like fairy feet, on the already established drifts, but often that sound is upstaged - like this morning - by the howl of the wind in the treetops, its cold shiver and shake, a wild rumpus, showing off "I'm the wind! Do you hear me?!! I'M THE WIND!! I CAN UPROOT TREES! I RIP OUT BRANCHES! I WHIP LEAVES INTO A SWIRL TO BRIEFLY GIVE MY POWER SHAPE ! I AM INVISIBLE AND INVINCIBLE!!"

And the snow keeps falling. Steady, a slight slant, re-covering what had started appearing again through the melt the past few days - stumps, small trees, the three large granite slabs in back of our house that Richard can't stand. The pond's edges had melted yesterday, a promising sign. And the newly thinned grove of prodigious conifers beside the pond looks sharp and fresh, the sawdust of their recent spruce up scattered on the snow. Gone are several tall ghosts, left standing for years, an uprooted leaner gone too, as well as several gnarly old maples, some ash, 2 dead cherries. The downed wood will give us at least 2 1/2 cords of firewood for next year once Spring arrives and we get a chance to process, stack, and dry the downed trunks. We'll also go in and down more saplings, open up the grove even more, and, most importantly, put a standing pipe in to lower the level of our pond and cut off constant use of our pond's over flow which, channel-less, deltas out among the tall trees and jeopardizes their future. The standing pipe out flow will form a stream around which we can landscape, bridge, plant, who knows. And that stream bed and overflow area, when fully dried, can be dug out more fully with our neighbor Dale's nifty and compact excavator later this summer. Also in the works will be planting some more trees, probably spruce, along the fence row past the pasture on the other side of the tall grove of trees. Richard also wants to figure a use for that pasture - grazing for goats, sheep, or a goose raising area. All green endeavors.

That's it. Green seems so far away. Unimaginable. Leaves? Grass? Plants? What are you talking about? Seasons. All to be embraced, accepted, sometimes white knuckled. It's what is. Still. And the green in the green mountain state is a long time coming. End of April usually. "Now are the times that try men's souls." Mine anyway. Not a revolutionary thought as originally intended by Mr. Paine, but it certainly has a Valley Forge look to things outside.

Think Green. Be well. Delight in something today.