Rethinking Lifestyle

Spring is a most wonderful time of year. The shades of dirty white, black and brown give way to a proliferation of greens. The evergreens are the stable background green from which to judge the new growth, first the grasses then the poplar trees. This year it took quite a while to see that green haze on the poplar trees, the indication that my dad uses to determine the time to start planting.

Horizontal lines of green bring peace and contentment, not just any green, but the green touched by that special light that arrives unannounced right after a spring rain. That experience is a remembered experience this spring. Normally I cringe when I hear a forecast for rain. I worry that there will be too much, and that local flooding will occur, and field work will be delayed. However this year everyone was looking forward to that first significant spring rain. And it came, finally, last Friday! We all rejoiced. When it came it turbocharged the tiny plants that were, by now, tenuously holding on to life.

Life on the prairie is best appreciated at two scales, the large landscape scale where those greens fill the horizon, and the tiny intimate detail scale where the prairie crocus hugs the ground and tentatively opens its fuzzy pale blue flowers offering a first feed to a brave insect.

Now we are experiencing the extravagant blossoms of our wild prairie fruits. First the plums, saskatoons and the chokecherry then, buffalo berry, currants, gooseberry, cranberry, raspberry and many others. Apple blossoms in the garden along with the dandelions are the major early source of nectar for our pollinating insects including the honey bee.

Not only is spring a tonic to our sight but the heavenly sounds of the meadowlark and the robin fill the air. Even the raucous call of the killdeer is a treat.

Every spring I am amazed again at the fragile nature of young and small things. I remember spring lambs being born and needing to find their mothers milk all on their own. I always wanted to help but realized that I would be interfering with a natural process that has worked for many thousands of years. Looking closely at a bud on an apple tree I see how delicate and vulnerable those buds are but that all new growth arises like that.

This year I continued planting trees and shrubs. The raspberries I planted on May 3 had those tiny fragile buds when they experienced that minus 7 degrees a few days after planting. I am still watering them and hope they will restart but they may not have survived. I will give them a few more weeks before I give up on them. The saskatoons I planted as plugs last fall made it through that frost and are leafing out well. It is a unique spring, having to water every few days compared to the springs I am used to where I am making drainage ditches. A wonderful time – nevertheless.

I wish you a wonderful growing season.