Happy Sunday, friends!
Here in Vermont, our usual mud season was not usual. In fact some called it epic, some Biblical, others called it relentless. Newspapers wrote articles, documenting with words and photos, the prolonged, messy and challenging weeks of impassable roads. Vermont’s free and independent newspaper, Seven Days, has a regular column called “Stuck in Vermont”. A few weeks back, they sent a reporter out into the field to do a story on being “Stuck in Vermont”, really stuck. There’s a fun video report featuring a town just a bit south of us, where a woman is carrying on the tradition of keeping folks appraised of road conditions in real time. Click here to see how my friend Sue and her neighbors deal with the roads in the springtime.
Batman and I make sure our pantry is ready for mud season, and that our windowsill has greens growing in the sunshine. We stayed on the hill for five days in a row in late March. Then we planned our trips for early in the morning when the mud was still frozen, so that we could get down and back before the roads began to warm up in the sun. Folks were checking in with neighbors and ATV’s were tuned up for possible emergency medical trips. It really was an unusual season, causing a bit of unease as we wonder what may be coming with warmer and earlier springs.
But hey, there’s more to life than fretting and worrying, right?
For instance…the season of drying laundry on the clothesline in the sunshine! My friend Stacy sent me these heirloom clothespins because she is a kindred spirit when it comes to air drying her laundry. And she is generous and thoughtful. Handcrafted in Washington State with local maple, they are made to be handed down through the generations. Top quality, long lasting, win win. You can read all about the clothespins at Lady and the Carpenter, here.
I went into the post office a few days ago to buy some stamps and was delighted to hear a charming sign of spring…the precious cheep cheeping of baby chicks, waiting in ventilated cartons to be picked up and taken to their new homes. Brave pansies are fluttering in the chilly breezes at our local gardening center and we picked up our year’s supply of very special maple syrup from neighbors over the ridge. Raven Hill Farm and Anchor Light Farm collaborate every spring to make maple syrup the very old fashioned way. Maple sap gathered in the woods from taps hung with buckets, loaded onto a horse drawn sled and evaporated with wood harvested from the forest, this syrup is the real deal. Check out their story here.
I used chives from the garden the other day and I’m keeping an eye out for the wild ramps that grow out by the stonewall. Batman has all sorts of seeds started under lights in the utility room, on the windowsill downstairs and tucked into the hoop house. The rototiller has been warmed up in anticipation of creating a new wildflower bed, soon to be filled with pollinators. We spent some time in the fall rejuvenating the area in the meadow where I’m channeling Miss Rumphius, coaxing more and more lupine to naturalize. Fingers crossed.
The quilt shown above was stitched in 2015, and I named it Persephone, as it’s made with fat quarters from Spoonflower splashed with pussy willows, forsythia, maple wings and maiden hair ferns. The fabric is designed by Holly Ward Bimba and you can see it here. When I was a little girl, my bedroom was wallpapered with a design that wove pussy willow and forsythia branches together and I still have a partial roll of it tucked away in a closet. I dream of having a bit of it lining a cupboard or some such thing when I am an elderly woman, to remind me of springs past.
So as the grey and chilly days drag on, and the soil remains too damp and cold to dig, I hold fast on to hope. Hope that our gardens and yard will come alive again soon…hope that all the good in the world will be recognized and celebrated (because there is a lot of good in the world)…hope that all of us will bring our loving energy into each and every day.
xo