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 Spring mornings are a lot like Christmas. Each day
we get up and go out into the yard, or walk along the creek or visit
the horses in the pasture. And each day, each morning, we find
something new the sun has brought us.
Pinfeather leaves of an unbelievable green now start showing on
cottonwoods that have stood like stark ghostly frames all through
the cold winter. Hopeful blades of grass peek through clumps of
brown left over from last summer’s verdant pasture. Everywhere we
look there is something new and different.
A lot of this Christmas-in-spring is kept just among us, because we
might be accused of being ... well ... poetic if we told people why
we were really carrying that coffee cup out into the yard. So we say
lame things like “I think I’ll get some of that fresh air this
morning.” What we really mean, of course, is “I want to see if
Richardson’s bay mare has had that foal yet.”
Some of us have worked very hard last fall and winter to prepare for
this spring. By grafting. OK, we have a Granny Smith apple tree.
Let’s see if we can’t get a branch of Rome Beauties or Jonagolds to
grow on it, too. And we understand completely that where we live no
olive tree can survive the winter. That isn’t supposed to stop us
from trying, is it? Nature pitches us a
boatload of challenges each day that we’re alive. This plant needs
more water than falls naturally here. That tree can’t take the
temperatures we get. This little tree needs soil with more organic
matter in it. [to top of second
column] |
And those challenges are the
stuff winter dreams are made of. We do the best we can to cure the
lack, the freeze, the drought, and then we wait for April. We wait
impatiently until we can come out of the house some morning and
check the grafts on the apple tree and see tiny green leaves coming
on the grafted branch. We search the bare ground where we planted
that new kind of seed that won’t grow here - to see if it’ll grow
here.
It is a continuing feast of green, a triumph of anticipation. An
April morning can make us want to sing.
[Text from file received from
Slim Randles]
Ol' Jimmy Dollar
is Slim Randles' first children's book. The book is for kids
K-3rd grades and is even better when parents read it with children.
Ol' Jimmy Dollar makes for sweet dreams and if you have a dog
even better. Available now on Amazon.
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