Silent Awakening

For the last few days, Tina Malia’s song, The Silent Awakening (paid link), has been running through my head. All around us, a “silent awakening” has definitely been palpable, as spring advances.

Today is the Vernal Equinox on the homestead’s latitude. Two days ahead of official Vernal Equinox, when the sun crosses the equator on March 20th this year.

lately, we’ve felt spring at its annual tipping point. Our days are warming up enough to melt the snow. We can smell the earth, the budding plants, even the animals around us. The compost pile, frozen hard most of the winter, has come a live slowly but surely.

Beach view, Zeiger Family Homestead

Nice day on the veranda, if a bit chilly… (Photo: Mark A. Zeiger).

We haven’t seen any mosquitoes yet, but passing through any outer doorway festoons one with gossamer web strands, each tipped with a tiny, perfect baby spider.

Way too early one morning, I got out of bed and went to the yard to, uh, do stuff. Where I stood, I saw a small thrashing movement. A tiny worm appeared from under a small overhang of rock. It appeared to be an earth worm or something similar, but it crawled along the underside of the mossy rock (I don’t know if earthworms can do that?) and it was definitely smaller than an average earth worm. I’ve remained curious about that worm since then, and regret that I wasn’t more awake. I might have caught it to observe more closely the next morning.

Of course, even now, as our daylight hours overtake our hours of darkness, we’re still not “quite there.” We still have snow in the forecast. Yesterday, Aly and I loaded a St. Patrick’s Day lunch onto a tray and trooped out to the veranda, where the sun soaked the picnic table. Within minutes, we packed up and trooped back inside, where we thawed numbing ears and fingers in the wood stove’s warmth.

More importantly, the birch sap hasn’t started running yet. I trimmed two suckers at the base of the dooryard birch. When they begin oozing sap from the cuts, I’ll set taps to gather this year’s sap harvest (see Birch Sap is Back “On Tap”).

birch suckers cut to reveal when sap starts flowing

Watching for weeping on birch suckers (Photo: Mark A. Zeiger).

The gardens seem immune to Michelle’s copious mental activity on their behalf. Things are thawing out slowly, but the beds are all covered with snow for the most part, and appear asleep. If there’s any of this Silent Awakening happening there, it’s pretty darn silent . . . .

homestead garden

The Solar Garden has to catch a few more rays before planting begins (Photo: Mark A. Zeiger).

And, even though we begin to hear reports of arrivals around town, we have yet to hear any returning song birds. For the moment, we rely on the chatter of our resident chickadees and Pacific wrens to provide the bulk of our bird song. Before long, though, we’ll have a not-so-silent awakening in that arena.

This entry was posted in Seasons & Celebrations and tagged , . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *