Early this morning I walked in frost, the sun a pale gold ball burning through thin trunks of birches growing alongside Balmoral Road. I heard the sharp chatter and ‘cheerio-cheeriup-cheerio’ songs of American robins returned to the North following spring migration, as well as the monotonic trill of a territorial dark-eyed junco, the ringing notes of blue jays and scattered chirps of foraging chickadees. I turned onto Matheson Brook Road and spotted a ruffed grouse sprinting across the gravel, its head and neck outstretched, its body one flat line of directional intent arrowing to the cover of shrubs on the far side of the road. Another ruffie skulked among alder stems, kicking up old leaves finally released by snow that on a shaded slope still lay like a spreading white amoeba with extended pseudopods reaching. Matheson Brook ran dark olive over golden stones, the touch of the cold air above it like breathing in promise.
Mourning Dove (© Magi Nams)
More than a month has passed since my last post, and Nova Scotia is well and truly marching into spring with occasional missteps back into winter. The robins have returned, and a male mourning dove who cooed out soft, breathy territorial claims and invitations to females has found his mate, with both doves frequently visiting my bird feeder. I’ve cleared all the old growth from my flowerbeds, revealing shoots of daffodils, day lilies, and irises exuding shocking spring green. Delicately blooming crocuses splash purple, white, and yellow among daffodil stems, and the maple sap is running high. Vilis engages in daily treks to the sugar maples growing along the brook at the northwest limits of our property, where he put out eleven taps and buckets three weeks ago and has since collected and boiled down buckets and buckets of sap into the liquid gold of maple syrup. On boiling days, the air in the yard is filled with the scent of maple and wood smoke, the first of these also pervading the house during the final, carefully-supervised quarter hour of boiling before the syrup is bottled in sterilized jars. Later, after cooling, the jars are placed in our pantry, where shafts of light catch the clear liquid filling them and turn it to rich, dark amber. As a child, I read books about children who lived in the magical Land of Sugar Maples, where they collected this gift of sweetness from the trees and boiled it into sap or further to form maple candy or maple sugar. How I yearned to live in such a place! Now I do, the tapping of our sugar maples a cherished spring ritual.
Maple Syrup – Amber in the Pantry (© Magi Nams)
