Spring is Coming

I cleaned out the vegetable garden today. It should have been done in November. But, as you all know, life has a way of taking over! I cleared away the final, withered, unpicked Romano beans off their trellises. The dead vines of last summer’s deep indigo Morning Glories crumbled to dust in my hands. I pulled the dried stalks of heirloom tomatoes I had espaliered, (which the squirrels had particularly enjoyed as their own personal buffet). Even stiff, bare sunflower canes waited to be pulled. I was long overdue.

But then, miraculously, under blankets of dried oak leaves covering garden pots, I discovered burgeoning strawberry buds, hidden under umbrellas of wide green leaves, having shockingly survived the winter.

I uncovered pale green fava bean sprouts already climbing a lattice on their own.

(Well that will save me some steps!)

I even discovered a few marigolds and pansies, which had refused to die.And then, I spied the first butter yellow daffodils of the season.As I put away my garden tools in the barn, I saw that the small Black Phoebe bird has returned to her mud nest in the rafters, as she does each spring. Soon I’ll have photos to share of wide open baby bird mouths, bigger than their bald heads, waiting, in their nest. And one day, in a few weeks, I’ll walk into the barn, and instead of the mother aflutter at my presence, a handful of adolescents will tumble awkwardly from the nest and careen out of the barn. And I will worry that they have flown from the nest too soon.