With blinking eyes we emerged...

March-April, 2005
It never fails to amaze me how, every year, regardless of the severity of the winter, the mantle of snow and ice does fall away, revealing tiny, fragile signs of life. Every year. You'd think I'd get it but every winter I have to fight back thoughts that there is simply no way that life below ground could have survived that clamp of Jack Frost.

Well I don't mind being shown that I should have more faith when I see green things sending up seekers of light, pushing through the last bits of snow cowering in the shady spots. All the more interesting for me this year as I had planted nothing, having moved in November, so I did not have any map of the plants here. Wait and see, I'd say. Then I'd get my seed packets and trowel and hover near the door waiting for the moment when it was ok to plant them. Wait and see was too quickly replaced with plan, plan, plan.

I started some seedlings indoors, a great project when there are kids. Depends on the seeds though. Sunflowers start quickly and grow big fast, carrots on the other hand, soon lost some interest for Owen and Finnie as the earth surface doesn't change for oh so long. Then there was the tray burgeoning with basil seedlings. More basil than Italy needed, I had growing in perfect time to have them healthy and strong by the time they could go outside. But a sunny day on our deck with the cover on transformed them to jelly. It was a massacre with complete cruelty, even though unintended. I tried to salvage some but they had gone en mass. Well, I think it was good that I had labelled this year My Learning Year.

Spring was our Ozonol, our ointment of restoration. We all breathed deeper, sucking in the goodness of it and expelling the stress of change. Winter was not the nasty in this, just not the right season to rebuild. Winter was for learning to not think too far forward and to not question our decision. Spring was the time to make this decision the right one. I leapt into the season with an intensity that may at times have scared my family. Don't know why, though sometimes I'd come in from a bout of limb wrestling with tree bits in my teeth and a funny look in my eyes.

You could not keep my inside, from the early morning where I could stand on our deck, shivering with a mint tea, investigating the land for new growth, mid-day when the kids and I would spill outside to run amok in our field, to the evening when I would get an opportunity to go outside on my own to cull the cedar grove to the north of our house. I took this as a unique opportunity to transform an area badly in need of attention.

Timothy had bought us two bow saws, something he was familiar with but was new to me. Wonderful tools, they are simply a sawblade in a rounded grip that allows you to manually trim limbs and small trees. I did. Lots. There was so much overgrowth of the cedars that you could not initially walk one foot in any direction in the grove. By the time I was finished Owen had labelled the place Jamak-ak and created a circus on a rockpile. It was a lovely area, filled with ferns and cool at all times. Great light and mystery in there and I was fully restored always, after a bout of order-restoration there. The dead trees were removed and placed around the vegetable patch so that I could staple gun chicken wire around the garden to theoretically keep out bunnies and deer. Seemed a bit of overkill but we did have both beasties about and I liked the idea of using something discarded from one area and implementing it elsewhere. I guess I was marking my territory, wresting a place I could call home. It was a wonderful thing, tugging and pulling and clearing and letting the land breathe a bit better in places. I was in my element.