Spring Has Sprung On Cozy Ridge

The birds are just singing away these days up on Cozy Ridge! Our long winter is finally over, and though it did snow last week, all of creation seems thrilled to be springing to life once again!

I too have sprung into action, clearing the yard of the dozens of trees I felled over the winter, getting a head start on next year’s wood pile! I’ve been strategically working to cut all the scrubby and misplaced trees that grew up during the years the farm had been abandoned.

And I have been generously replacing them with others. I planted over three hundred seedlings and saplings over the past few weeks, including hemlocks and white pine, shagbark hickory and white oak, blueberries and elderberries! I am also getting ready to plant the black locust trees I’ve grown from seeds!

Ever since I was a boy, I’ve enjoyed planting trees. I love that old legend about the Oxford scholars who had the forethought to plant and preserve the oak trees that would be needed centuries later to replace the huge beams in their ancient buildings. Fictional or not, I find the story inspiring, and communicating a sensibility and vision I desire to live into!

This spring, my primary focus has been on beginning an orchard. I planted seven apple trees of various varieties, along with pear and peach trees. I designed the whole orchard around a single old apple tree, probably over a hundred years old, which dates back to the original family that first farmed this land. I’m trying to preserve this old tree as a visual depiction of our rootedness! I’ll let you know how that goes…

I expect that this orchard may continue to bear fruit well after I am gone, and that my kids, my grandkids, and whoever else occupies Cozy Ridge, can long enjoy the fruit of my labors. This life, after all, is not just about ourselves, but about the community that grows around us!!

That is exactly how I think of my writing! As long as people keep having kids, those children will need to be loved and cared for, housed and fed. They will need to be read to, and taught to read and to think for themselves. I hope that my feeble efforts can be helpful to those who grow these children up, and so I keep on writing!

And whatever you may find yourself doing this spring, may you find in your labors a way of caring for others, like we do here on Cozy Ridge, and may you experience a generous measure of joy in the process!

From our hearts to yours,