Signs of spring

It’s still cool out there, but it’s beginning to look and feel like early spring. The air is moist, not winter dry. Daffodils and other spring bulbs are emerging in the gardens–and along the brick south wall of the house, some have buds. Birds are flitting and flirting in the yard, chirping their little hearts out. Mostly I’m seeing ones that over-winter in Massachusetts, but they’re more active than they’ve been in months. I’m waking to light, even if I wake up before the alarm. (Though not if I wake up as early as I did today. Himself had a rare bout of insomnia and crept out of bed before 5 AM and that woke me so I couldn’t get back to sleep. At least I was able to drift off for awhile after he left for work at 7. Poor man will hurt tonight.) The overwintered kale is perking up again, as are the dormant perennial herbs.

The forecast calls for a vile wintry mix later in the week, so I’m resisting the urge to do much in the garden, but I won’t be able to hold off much longer. Just a short row of spinach and one of arugula. Maybe scatter some alfalfa on the bed that will eventually get eggplant and peppers, since they won’t go in until mid-May at the earliest. At least pull out the fall greens that didn’t make it through the winter. I need to get my hands dirty!

According to my mom, my father’s cousins were farmers north of Albany, New York. They were also gamblers, and like my father and myself, adrenalin junkies and risk takers. (My risks are more intellectual and financial, my thrill-seeking more…intimate. My father drove race cars and did gymkana on ice.) Their thing was to try to get the first tomatoes to the Albany markets-a risky proposition when the farm is north of the city in the hills. But it was a calculated risk This was mid 20th century, when produce markets were much more localized. If hothouse tomatoes or “ripe” tomatoes from Florida or California were even available in Albany in winter and spring, they were luxury items, something the average family would get once in a blue moon. And of course, back then people remembered that tomatoes were supposed to taste like something, so those “treats” might not have been worth the money. The risk involved in setting out tomatoes early with frost protection must have seemed small compared to the reward of tomato-craving people willing to pay a premium for the season’s first juicy red goodness. Some years, Mom says, they failed catastrophically, losing a good chunk of the tomato crop to late frost. Others, they made a comfortable cushion of money by beating everyone else to market at a time when people were dreaming of tomatoes. I seem to have inherited that urge to plant early and see what happens. Luckily, in my case, the worst that happens is I need to start more seeds, or maybe pick up a six-pack of tomato seedlings at the farmers’ market, not wonder how I’ll pay the bills all year.

Nature bulletin: a magnificent redtail is circling the neighborhood.