A morning at the outset of the fourth week of January, and it feels like spring.
There is a cold edge to the breeze, to be sure, but the sun is shining, the remnant snow melting fast now into a soft and muddy earth. The air is alive with the sound of birdsong, the burrs and trills of the blackbirds drowning out the smaller songs of the chokecherry birds and the bell-like notes of the finches and sparrows. Yesterday, I found the tracks of a single rabbit in the snow, and our small world here is filled with the promise of time and space to grow.
That will change, of course: Already, a broad bank of dark clouds is gathering at the western horizon and the dusting of snow slated to arrive tomorrow has been reforecast for overnight tonight. Meteorological predictions maintain that this is the leading edge of a new, complex, and intermittent system of patterns that will be with us through month’s end.
Nothing would make us, or this thirsty earth, happier now.
But it reminds us that time passes rapidly, and official spring will be here far sooner than we can be ready for it. Of course, even that means less than it used to, given that spring now is merely an undercurrent, a supply line, in a seemingly endless battle for primacy wage between winter and summer here. Where discrete seasons used to exist for preparation, cultivation, tilling, planting, now each day, week, month is its own spin of the roulette wheel, and planning is no longer possible.
Still, we do the best we can with what we are granted, and that means taking advantage of winter, such as it is, as a time of preparation. We shall begin early this year, cataloguing the seeds we still have, acquiring those we don’t, sorting and storing them all properly, and, in a matter of mere weeks now, soaking those that require it before putting them into the earth. It’s an annual rite of sorts, but one that has become less circumscribed by time in recent years, given the new vagaries of climate and weather that have nullified more ordinary timetables now. But today’s featured work is an example of one of the traditional tools of the season to come, wrought in classic form and fashion and somehow shaped to an impossible perfection. From its description in the Other Artists: Pottery gallery here on the site:
Keep your seeds safe and dry in this perfectly-shaped little seed pot by Benito Romero (Taos Pueblo). Great for storage in the cold months, and useful for dispensing seeds during planting season. Made of the Pueblo’s local micaceous clay; 3″ high by 3.5″ across at widest point (dimensions approximate). Side view shown at top.
Micaceous clay
$65 + shipping, handling, and insurance
It will be months, not mere weeks, before we can begin planting. But we can begin preparations now, in the quiet of winter, for the frenetic activity that accompanies the warmer seasons. It’s how we ensure that we will have enough to eat, and enough to share.
And like us, the earth needs the proper tools, and the promise of time and space to grow.
~ Aji
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