First of March

Dear friends,

First of March opened with a blaze of sun. March—the word just won’t conjure up the winter world I still treasure. It speaks to me of Change, even as I thrill to the new snowdrifts and the hilarious height of the snow outside the dining room windows. The sun insists to me that my world will change.

Why do I resist the coming of spring? Twofold: the glory of this winter’s consistent white, tree-decked purity and the endless bouts of cross-country skiing in unfolding fields more beautiful than any I knew before; and that I haven’t fulfilled my winter tasks that should be done before the ground opens up and sucks me into the world of growing things again.

We flung open the greenhouse doors at 8:35 this morning. That early, the heat trapped could warm the house today. It’s been 9:30 or 10:00, before. Today feels new. Ran upstairs to open the French the doors in the bedroom, too, for two storeys of heat at an outlandishly early hour. Change is in the air.

Suddenly a log skidder is blasting its way out of the woods across our field. They’re logging up on the ridge, as fast as they can before sugaring season begins when the guys—farmer Dave Silloway’s nephews-- go work on their real income stream. God it makes a huge racket, like a boy’s big toy—“and it can even drag real logs!...” They’re pulling out skinny red pines planted for telephone poles in the ‘50’s. There was a government program starting in the Depression incentivizing the farmers to plant red pines on the steeps all through the valley. Rural electrification was still a big thing and the market for the poles promised to stay robust. It didn’t always work out that way, and too many trees—non-native, shallow-rooted, vulnerable to windfall--still crest the ridges. They’re almost junk now. Mark chainsawed dozens of them fallen across a lovely old farm road that takes us up the side of the ridge on skis and walks. The owner of all that ridge land has got to maintain his forest to keep his Current Use tax-reduction status, and the logging can open the land for the best trees to grow unimpeded. Considerately, the forester and logger came to talk to us, the closest neighbors to the cutting site, about it before they began. We dream of owning a piece of that ridge and snowshoed up to inspect their work the other day: a decent environmental job.

This morning, we went to Annual Town Meeting: on a Tuesday morning! My lips fold in disapproval. Who can get there, the retired people only? Worse than that, we don’t even get to discuss as a group, intently hearing all sides, before taking a binding vote on the budget or on new land-use ordinances. We have to go to the polls instead, each in our own little cubicle, and no land-use plans are voted on. I am dismayed to find Randolph, Vermont, less democratic than Harvard.

Before we left, I saw Mark moving as usual among his seedlings in the greenhouse. Brandywine, Peace Vine—4” tall tomatoes already have That Smell. Mesclun running riot in its tray, pushing, crowding, already snippable. Basil and cilantro, both ready to season supper today, if modestly. Peppers, eggplant (even white eggplant—will I like it?) 2—3” high, though you can’t put them in the garden here until June! How that used to turn me off. Now I know that in this vale of fertility and sun they will thrive in a lushness I never had before. The lap of luxury, this valley.

Making this place work is a lot of work, believe me. Let the rigors of spring take their time in coming. I’ll gaze out the window and gloat over the two feet of snow still on the ground……………….With love, Josie