I made a donation to the Arbor Day Foundation. As a thank you, they sent me over a dozen trees. Norway spruce, dogwood, crabapple, redbud, hawthorne, Pee Gee hydrangeas.
I have not planted trees since I was a child, maybe dogwoods then too? Along the red brick of North Summit Street with my father.
Call me sentimental, but planting these trees feels like a powerful step in my commitment to the care of this land. I will put my faith in something tiny, protect it from the overexhuberant creatures I love and from creatures unknown. I will commit to a future I cannot yet imagine. I will try anyway, penciling in details of that future around the needs of these trees, and genuinely hope the sketch becomes reality.
Pruning in early spring and mulching in the fall, watering in dry spells. Gathering fruit and blooms and fallen branches, sweeping dry leaves into a cozy blanket for bulbs hiding nearby. The turning point in the year when those bulbs burst through the leafy carpet while bright, fresh color peeks out from deciduous branches above. The spruce windbreak weaving a stiff wool sweater around the cozy haven of the front yard, thick and green and safe. The spring day when the blooming trees that line the driveway finally fill out and confetti our cars with petals in an impossibly romantic welcome.
Most of the trees on this land are silver maples. I’d like to have more variety but I will say that looking forward to tapping them is helping me through the December darkness. In a couple of months, when the daytime temperatures are above freezing and the nighttime temperatures are below, we will snuggle into our warmest and head into the woods with our buckets and taps.
Not quite the classic maple flavor of a sugar maple, silver maples nevertheless provide a tasty and plentiful harvest without much labor. We make a small hole, add a spout and a bucket, and wait. It requires patience, though in this moment it seems like nothing compared to the timescale of growing a tree.
As the dogs amble through the timber on their morning walk, I check the buckets for the pale liquid. Slowly, day by day, they fill.
Once the trees have shared what they can give us, we fill our largest pots and Jon builds a fire. It goes faster inside on the stove, but I swear it tastes better cooked over wood smoke, and it keeps the kitchen from getting sticky.
Last year, Jonathan fed the fire with sweet, quiet devotion. This year I will bundle up, build a fire in the disco barn (that is another story), in the big metal bowl that arrived in our yard with the derecho (yet another story) and sit.
And sit. And drink coffee, and holler at Roscoe, and watch the duck and chicken show, and maybe give them snacks. And sit. And add more logs, and watch the tiny cities rise and fall in the coals (I always think of forging creatures deep under Tolkien’s mountains). And join Jon for a smoke. And sit. And occasionally sneak a taste as the sap boils down by a factor of 25.
We’ll probably end up with a couple quarts if we’re lucky. But it will be worth it. And it will taste so much sweeter for the wait.
You will enjoy the stories of maple in Braiding Sweetgrass. Sounds like a great yearly ritual. Peace, friend.