we had made such headway into spring! Over weeks the snow cover shrank and the stunned land surfaced as the dun-colored dry residue of last year’s living, or as small new sprouting things, green curls among the dead stuff, trying to get comfortable, trying to get started.
Read on…On cue, the spring clouds grew sharp edges and hung above our heads like ill-fitted keystones: loose and menacing.
every July, a single tier of orange leaves shows up in the skirts of the maples along the road by my barn. Only tourists take these turned leaves for evidence of Fall. Actually, they are but a harbinger, arriving when the air is warm, the greens of the land are the greens of deep Summer, the birds are myriad and the butterflies are just emerging.
There is much to be said for living long in the same place, so that you become fluent in its commentary upon the passing scene, so that when you hear it speak in orange leaves in mid-July you understand that its remark is a reminder and not an announcement.
Slow Writing 