Love is in the Air

     What’s black and white and stinks all over?  Around here it’s skunks.  And there are plenty of them to smell.  It’s skunk mating season and that nose tingling, eye-watering aroma is one of the sure signs that spring is just around the corner.

   Skunks are normally reclusive, but during mating season the males become very excitable.  When they wake from their half-hibernation, they run about lifting their tails and marking the boundaries of their territories.  Then they fight over females and in their frenzy to reproduce they also tend to spray random animals and humans.  My pastor friend Les once went for an early spring drive.  His truck window was rolled down to take advantage of the soft notes of birds and the warm breezes.  As he drove past an opening in the woods, a male skunk whirled and aimed.  Bulls-eye! The majority of his spray hit Les directly on his face and beard.  Although Les bathed in tomato juice and shaved off his beard, it was a month before those of us in the front pews could no longer smell him. 

     Female pole cats also perfume the air.  They do it to discourage unwanted advances. If an eager suitor goes too far, the female stomps her feet to warn him and then whirls around.  SQUIRT!  I can think of some times in my life when that would have come in handy.  Anyway, overwhelmed with grief, the rejected male apparently runs out to the road and commits suicide.  I drove over five flattened carcasses this week.  No wonder the morning air has been sulfurous with skunk pee.

     But then, this evening, on my way out to the back forty to feed the dogs, I smelled it.  That first ripe whiff of wet earth and spring mud.  Skunk love lingers on the morning mists, but the evening air heralds my love.  The smell of spring is in the air.  The piping notes of the peepers can’t be far behind.

Mud

     This is the messiest time of year. Even though the days are warm we are still feeding the stove, but it’s dampered down which creates more ashes and they sift out every time we open it, leaving a pale powder on every table and dresser in the house which daily dusting can’t defeat. And, the cats are shedding. When Tip jumps up to perch on the arm of my chair, a flotilla of cat hairs drifts in behind him. Yesterday, he crawled into my lap and when he left I was furrier than my cat. Then, there are the tired houseplants. They’ve grown leggy in their search for sunlight and their dying leaves lie curled in fetal positions all around the pots.

     Did I mention the mud? We’ve had steers around the house all winter and the thawing ground outside the white board fence is a quagmire. The chickens must be tended to twice a day and they live on the other side of this mess, which means we are constantly tracking dirt into the house. We also have a bottle calf in the shed so there’s a dirty bottle and mixing bowl to wash up twice a day and a bag of calf milk replacer on the mud porch ringed by a fine flour of powdered milk.

     And yet, all of this mess is part of a promise. I heard the first whisper of it last night when Scott ran inside to tell me the peepers are singing. I stepped out into the starry night and stood on the sidewalk to listen to their spring choir. They sounded faint and far off, but the promise of warmer weather was there.

     When God created the world he dug deep into the oceans and made piles of mud that He patted into mountains. And because there was no one there to say, “Don’t track that mess into the house!” He kept right on. His muddy mess was the beginning of a beautiful world. The muddy mess inside and outside my house is also a beginning. It’s a symptom of the birth of spring.

March

March is mud
mucking,
slop,
sucking,
streams
flowing
grass
growing
calves
running
colts
sunning
Peepers
singing,
“Winter’s gone
and
spring is
springing!”

It's Maple Time

     It’s the first week of March and the morning air tastes sweet. There’s white steam curling out of sugar shacks all across the county and in McDowell the rising column from Sugar Tree Country Store is pink in the early morning light. It’s been perfect sugar weather. Nights below freezing and days above. These are the temperatures that really put the trees to work sucking up the starches they’ve stored in their roots over the winter and sending them skyward as sugars to jump start spring growth.
     My son Justin has been in the syrup business since he was about sixteen. That’s the year he and a friend collected enough sugar water to set up their own ramshackle sugar shack and boil until they had produced about 13 gallons of syrup which they then sold to visitors at our annual Maple Festival. It took about 500 gallons of water and 48 hours of work drilling, hanging, collecting, boiling and bottling to produce that small amount of syrup, but the boys were proud of their operation and were even featured in an article in the Washington Post about the county’s youngest syrup producers.
     For the last two years, Justin has opted to just gather his water and sell it to other producers who will boil it, condensing it until it is light amber, sticky and sweet. This year, he hung 80 buckets in the sugarbush down on our farm in McDowell. Joe had to set up an electric fence to keep the cows away from it because they love sugar water and will walk from tree to tree nosing buckets and dumping as they drink. Justin gathers his water by hand , tipping the buckets into a 425 gallon transport tank which rests on the back of an old farm truck. It takes him about an hour each time he collects and lately the buckets have been brimful twice a day. The season is only a few weeks long, and farmers who work their sugarbush are boiling without a break so they can finish off as much syrup as possible before the trees bud out and the rising water gets sappy and off-flavored.
     The smell of sweet steam is usually one of the earliest signs of spring here in Highland. So raise a jug of maple syrup and make a toast to warmer and sunnier days to come.

It’s maple time
It’s sugar time
It’s tapping trees for syrup time
It’s dripping, dropping
Sweet drops plopping
Buckets hanging
Tin lids banging
White steam roiling
Water boiling
Pancakes sizzling
Syrup drizzling

It’s maple time
It’s sugar time
It’s tapping trees for syrup time.

.

Sleeping Beauties

Just when I’ve had enough of winter weather and snow and ice, the sun pops out and turns it all into a big bowl of sticky chocolate pudding which I wade through on my way to and from the house. For the first time in over a month, I can see more brown than white. The glots of dirt that drip off my boots onto the floor are proof that the sun still shines.

Since I’m feeling hopeful, and the thermometer is above freezing, I decide to bring some sleeping beauties into my house. All I need is a pair of garden shears and an overgrown yard. Dogwoods, forsythia, flowering quince, redbud, witch hazel, hawthorn, honeysuckle, saucer magnolia, star magnolia, crabapple, flowering almond, pussy willow, spirea, lilac and viburnum –any of these will work. After cutting off several branches, I lay them on the sidewalk and pound the cut ends with a hammer. Then I bring them inside and put them in vases all around the house. In a week or two I will have swelling buds and then riotous flowers. I will create a new bouquet each week until the middle of March.

Spring may be several months away, but I can hang on as long as I have the promise of warmer weather blooming in a Mason jar on my kitchen window sill.