In the back of the Tacoma last Friday, two Black Tartarian cherry saplings rested on their sides, their tender slender trunks crossing each other as I took the last corners of the ride home more gently than I usually do. Here we are, twenty-three years later on this generous and patient piece of land, finally planting fruit trees. I don’t know what we were waiting for. A peach tree will soon join these two in the cut field to the east, where we used to pasture our meat chickens in the years when we had that kind of time.

Spring gets us all riled up and we foolishly reach beyond our capacity with wild dreams about that Country Living photoshoot of a garden, only to wind up with bindweed climbing the t-posts that barely hold up the orange snow fencing around the tomatoes and beets. We’re suckers for this season and she knows it, smiling indulgently upon our ferocious weeding sessions, all the while carrying on some secret arrangement with the stickseed and sumac shoots lurking just beneath the soil. We laugh together about it all and shake our heads, wondering when we’ll learn our lesson (so far, the answer to that is a resounding “never”). We know that fruit trees need a sort of semi-constant surveillance and some babying at the start, and we are motivated by the thought of our first cherry harvest to get us off the couch to cover them with netting when the first fruits appear. With summer approaching, I’m even considering pitching a tent to keep watch through the night.

My uncle’s recent gift of about forty tulip bulbs, descendants of my Opa’s collection that he meticulously tended during the last century, has me swooning and focused on their daily safety and welfare, the closest I’ll ever come to raising children (except for the cats, but they can live outdoors for days and no one will call the local authorities on us). I planted exactly ten on the northern edge of the new potato patch (still waiting for potatoes) and have seven left. Someone with paws or hooves neatly removed three of them in the night, not even trying to backfill the holes with any dirt. Three of the remaining seven have either bloomed or are about to burst forth in all their parrot-variety glory. It’s all I can do to not call in sick for work and camp out to witness that moment.

The other thirty are growing nicely in front of an old railroad tie that borders the mulched flowerbed in front of our living room windows. As if signaling some numerical significance, three of these stand in full bloom, lemon drop-yellow cups atop bright green stems. They are perfect and I can’t stop smiling at them. Only yesterday I noticed that the petals had begun to turn orange-y red on the edges and this morning, one is fully blushing with random red streaks (probably all that attention she’s getting…not used to it, I suppose). I remember reading in an “all things tea” magazine that tulip blooms are edible, and a photo display showed a tray of robust red and yellow ones filled with tarragon chicken salad. The accompanying article reassured the reader that the taste would be bland or at least delicate and I found the presentation quite elegant. But I’m not sure I could ever eat one…it feels too extravagant and I’m simply not done admiring them as they are yet. Maybe if I had a field full, I’d feel differently. I’ll keep you posted.

In other springtime land news, the morning walks are leading me to an eventual summer, as evidenced by the increasing number of silken spiderweb strands that crisscross my face as I make my way up the Hill on the western path that is quickly becoming its customary tunnel of green—sycamore and black walnut saplings entwined with voracious brambles. A spider’s real estate dream, every thorn an anchor for that first thread and once they get a-going, it won’t be long before I walk straight into a full-spoked spun wonder that will keep me blinking rapidly (and pointlessly, for nothing adheres to one’s lashes better than spider silk) until I get to the open field again. Most mornings it’s me and my two walking sticks but on occasion, I get this ambitious idea that I can singlehandedly free up each tree from its tangle of blackberry and grapevines on the strength of two swallows of rooibus tea and a pair of lopers. If I just did one each morning, the woods would be un-brambled by August. Yeah, right. I hear the distant laughter of some wiser and sentient being who seems eager for a front row seat to such folly. Of course I’ll oblige them and a good time will be had by all. We signed off on that agreement twenty-three years ago.

As the day’s agenda stretches out before us (and some of it already in the rearview mirror—three trays of granola cooling in the fridge, awaiting a late afternoon bagging and restocking session for the market), I fully expect more of this delicious season to work its way under my skin and fingernails until I’m all entwined like a sycamore sapling.

I hope no one with lopers thinks I need to be freed up anytime soon.