January's placid, frigid solitude gives way to lengthening days and the discernible stirring of critters. There is no evidence that our innumerable groundhogs have roused themselves from their rocky warrens. (I suspect the famous Pennsylvania rodent is forcibly roused from his every February 2nd.) But the lingering odor of amorous skunks roving den to den is one sign change is afoot.
Robins, red breasted harbingers of spring, never really disappear in the winter, but are suddenly more prominent, pecking lasciviously at crab apples that remain, somehow, on a shrub near the crush house.
Canada geese leave web footed prints as they waddle through vineyard rows pecking for grubs and lingering grape seeds. Chased out of Eden and onto the frozen lake, they slide and struggle to gain enough speed to take flight to a neighboring, more hospitable lake.
Gina and Guiseppe, our resident mute swans, hunker near the moving waters at the inlet, then glide unperturbed and regal across the lake once the sun warms the waters, pausing periodically to arch graceful necks below the surface.
Normally they pay me no mind, but lately I find them gliding toward me, plucking bits of food off the lake's barnstone edge near wherever I happen to be, and dropping morsels below water to retrieve in one graceful motion. Unlike geese who graze on land, swans feed only off the lake's bottom, and this newfound interest in bits of food at the water's edge indicates they may have eaten the bottom clean.
Native Americans call this the Hunger Moon, and although February is a time when certain days bring bright sunshine and warm rays, it is also when last season's food begins to run out.
The swans anticipate the supplemental food we now place out for them each day, although Guiseppe has taken to swimming aggressively toward me with a fierce back paddle kick, with Gina trailing more languidly but still with considerable speed. They beat me across the lake to the feed bowl, and Guiseppe lunges toward me, indicating that once the feed is in the bowl, I am politely requested to get about my other business. While Gina plucks morsels from the bowl and drops them below water to retrieve, Guiseppe circles the bowl, puffed up and serious, and follows me to the other side of the lake to make sure I don't get a notion to come back too soon.
Our resident swans have also displayed a new found interest in twigs and branches on the lake bottom, indicating that perhaps sometime soon after the grape buds break, we will have cygnets gliding awkwardly behind their graceful parents, perhaps from a nest in the marshy area over near where the sharp-kneed heron roosts.
February is a time of anticipation and preparation. Last year's growth is pruned from hoarfrost crusted grapevines, then weighed to assess the vigor of last year's canopy, and determine the fruitfulness of this year's anticipated crop.
One sign after another. Newly pungent mornings. Tracks on new fallen snow. Lengthening days. The gathering of twigs and branches. The indiscernible swelling of buds.
Winter is not a dormant season, but a time of invisible preparation, a time of pregnant anticipation, a time of pink horizons at sunrise and days careening from sun to snow to ice to rain.
Some mornings after a wet snow and then a cold night, the vineyard sparkles like diamonds. Other mornings it is a symphony of brown grass and bare trunks, except where piercing sun suddenly illuminates startling green moss and lichen.
Winter in the vineyard is a brutal, beautiful season, when abundant future growth mingles with present deprivation, and when fierce winds sometimes give way to some of the year's best light.
No comments:
Post a Comment