A Wet, Cold Spring

I took a break from reading the history of conservation yesterday to cut up four trees that fell in recent storms: one dead elm, two aspens, and a fifty-year-old hickory. I worked at it for about five hours, moving slowly but steadily, appreciating how well the saw ran and how sharp the saw chain was, at least through the first three or four hours. Afterwards I felt good and honest and sore and stiff. The wood I put up yesterday we'll burn in the winter of 2012-13, just about the time Nebraska will be preparing galley proofs of the 1843 book.

This morning, the dog and I made a binocular tour of the property and found the hawthorns coming on, the multiflora rose as well, the may apples well into their full bloom, the Morrow's honeysuckle bushes beginning to bloom, and the wild geraniums just about everywhere. The rocks laid down by several generations of humans who lived here before like a dank, low sky such as we have today. So do the does in the cedars because it keeps most predators holed up for the day. But a couple of minutes after Puppy Wuppy crossed the old barbed-wire fence following the scent of fawn, I looked up from the honeysuckle leaf to the sound of four female hoofs pounding hard as she pursued the dog back toward me, the dog apparently thinking I would save her from the alarmed mother. Maybe in October, but not today.