Homeland: Christmas in Spring – Sterling Journal-Advocate

Spring mornings resemble Christmas. Every day we get up and go to the farm, walk along the stream or visit the horses in the pasture. And every day, every morning we discover something new that the sun has brought us.

On cottonwood trees that have stood like ghostly frames all through the cold winter, pinfeather leaves are now appearing an incredible green. Hopeful blades of grass peek through the brown tufts left over from last summer's green pasture. Everywhere we look there is something new and different.

Much of this spring Christmas stays just between us, because we might be accused of being…well…poetic if we told people why we really carry that coffee cup into the garden. That's why we say lame things like, “I think I'm going to get some fresh air this morning.” Of course, what we really mean is, “I want to see if Richardson's bay mare has had that foal yet.”

Some of us worked very hard last fall and winter to prepare for this spring. By grafting. Okay, 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. And we fully understand that where we live, no olive tree can survive the winter. But that shouldn't stop us from trying, right?

Nature presents us with a lot of challenges every day of our lives. This plant requires more water than occurs naturally here. This tree cannot tolerate the temperatures we have. This small tree needs soil with more organic matter.

And these challenges are the stuff winter dreams are made of. We do our best to cure the shortage, the frost, the drought, and then we wait for April. We wait impatiently until we get out of the house one morning and can check the grafting of the apple tree and see tiny green leaves on the grafted branch. We search the bare ground where we planted this new kind of seed that won't grow here – to see if it will grow here.

It is an ongoing celebration of greenery, a triumph of anticipation. An April morning can make us sing.

Your cat isn't eating anything? Maybe you could use some free singing lessons.