The tomatoes are plumping up, the cukes are prolific and the acorn squash, abundant. No, I’m not talking about here in Vermont. Not yet anyway. But that’s what I hear from my longtime Vermont neighbors who’ve relocated to Florida. They’re the former proprietors of the many-acre-garden and Florida is now where they grow their vegetables.
They've fled the snows of Vermont and are settling into a life with sun warmth in January and garden abundance in May. But while I too enjoy a southern visit in the depths of winter, I've opted to spend most of my days and years, here at home.
The truth is, I'm used to tomatoes in August and I really do like the snow that turns winter days to crystal. I like roads less traveled, human-sized towns, herds of Holsteins and many shades of green surrounding me as I head down the highway. I like chance encounters with woodland creatures as I wander trails in early spring and I love the annual profusion of trillium in Burlington's Redrocks Park.
I think what I treasure most here is the change and diversity of our landscape - the expectation, the anticipation, that the changing seasons offer. Autumn is a rich artist's palate, a cacophony of color. Summer waves at me with its vibrant, undulating green and winter pulls a soft coverlet of white around my shoulders. But there's nothing like spring in Vermont, young and rambunctious, a riot of laughing sounds and colors. As we step into the sunlight after long months of cold and hibernation, spring offers us the hope of rebirth, the wonder of renewal.
Among the best songs of life-come-again is the wetland symphony of peepers in the early evening - or the quiet chorus of doves in the morning. I’m excited by the first welcome sighting of rusty-chested robins pulling up worms and the lime green sway of the weeping willows – and transfixed by the subtle way green seeps back into the grass and buds kiss open the tips of bare branches.
I'll concede to my transplanted friends the warmth of a southern winter and the harvest of early spring tomatoes. But give me the seasons; the way they shift and surprise me, giving pace to my life.
I'll savor this spring here at home, from the buds to the birds, and the cows back out in the pasture. I'll watch vegetable seedlings grow in my kitchen window and I'll await with expectation the ripening of tomatoes - in August.
