Time to plant your potatoes. Time to start your tomatoes. Time for duck-egg pasta alfredos. Time to watch for tornadoes. Time for rhubarb watering, baby goat tottering, and long-walk pottering. It’s time to watch for ephemeral blooms, laugh at barn cat zooms, and open windows in musty overwintered rooms.
Time to rhyme.
Time to be overly ambitious in the kitchen. Time for full-moon witchin’. Time to help friends and pitch in. It’s time for something different. Time to be poetic and belligerent.
Time for doing now that sap is flowing. Time for planting and for growing. It’s time to feel that thing we all feel when spring returns and the earth becomes real.
Pile last year’s weeds in a heap and light them on fire. Watch the flames rise and fall like passing desire. Till the ashes into your garden bed. Grow something new from something that’s dead. Think about this at harvest time. How something is living while something is dying.
POEM
The sun is coming up. Who knows where we are. It's been a long time since we drank champagne since we respected even the bad parts of ourselves. When did we try to make ourselves perfect? I didn't set out to copy anyone else, did you? Copy yourself, it is the only way to live. It is morning if we say it is morning no matter how late the night how dark the sky.
Some Things I Consumed This Past Fortnight
After some digging in the deep freeze, I found a package of pork ribs that had slipped under my radar. A ciabatta, pulled pork sandwich with homemade bbq sauce and honey-pickled jalapeños was in order.
A monstera youtube rabbit hole. I recently adopted a monstera plant, and fell deep into the yawning chasm of monstera care videos on YouTube. Monsteras are, apparently, a thing. They cast a spell, to be sure, but I had no idea how strong that spell could be.
A new gasket for my Stanley thermos. I appreciate how Stanley still offers replacement gaskets for their older items.
Duck eggs. It’s that time of year when the duck eggs start appearing in the corners of the barn, in piles of hay, and just straight up on the lawn. Our funny little flock is down to just two Swedish Whites. They are the comic heroes of the farm.
Flames. I’ve been making burn piles of old raspberry canes, garden weeds, and sticks in the lawn, cleaning up the garden beds for spring.
Enjoy the spring weather. Let it seep into you like rain.
Cheers,
Jake