sugaring and snowdrops

Though it's been an odd (non)winter, most New Englanders with buckets and spiles and maples are sugaring about now. The consensus is that it won't be a great year - either sap flow will be low (there isn't enough of a temperature difference, and therefore pressure difference, to encourage flow), or the sugar content will be poor. Sugar maples need a good, long, hard freeze in order to set up their loads of carbohydrates for pre-photosynthesis spring growth. So, there's a bit of wariness that goes into tapping, but we're still doing it.

We tapped six trees today; all of them big enough for just one bucket. There are a few we left alone, due to breakage from the Halloween storm. We won't have a lot of syrup, just a taste. But the sound of sap dripping into those chapeau'd buckets is invaluable. It sounds like spring and melt and thaw itself. And what's just as exciting is looking down at the leaf litter, and seeing snow drops bursting up like Bo Peep's shepherd's crook. So, the first bulbs are up. They mean a lot, those harbingers. 'To early bulbs' is from a couple of years ago, while I was up in northern Vermont...

In Winter I said in closing,

As a simple kind of balm,

(quote) It will all come up

Roses, before too long.

But here I am, here’s Spring,

And there are no roses.

They are still thorn and bud, far

Behind the maples and lilacs, even.

They are shut closed tight I am

Like the windy spaces between

Stems, without leaves.

– just not yet, and so

No there are no roses.

But here, snowdrops bending

Reverent heads, crocuses come

Brightly and, oh gratitude, daffodils.