Red

Our 1952 Farmall Tractor rests at the edge of our north vineyard. A mantle of sparkling snow still lingers upon it. In the frigid March sun, its red steel glows preternaturally bright.

With apologies to the poet William Carlos Williams, who wrote so memorably so many decades ago about a now-famous red wagon glazed in rain,

so much depends
upon
a red tractor
glazed with ice
crystals
beside the white
swans.

This remarkably bright March morning, which is also remarkably cold, our snowy tractor seems to epitomize where we are in this most unusual winter season.

Normally all the apple trees in the orchard would have been pruned months ago. 

In the vineyard, we would be going through and doing a second round of pruning, to adjust the number of buds. We would begin to see the buds swell, the fuzzy down under the shiny red outer scales starting to emerge.

Of course, there is no such thing as a “normal” winter. If we harken back two Marches ago, we were sweltering in an unprecedented string of 80 degree days.

But this winter, time seems to stand still. 

It is no warmer in March than it had been in January.

The grass is still mostly crusted in snow.

The snow around Bucky the vineyard groundhog’s winter den remains untrodden.

The vineyard is still mostly unpruned, as we monitor the effects of temperatures not recorded in decades, in this the winter of the  vortex, the winter of Janus.

The vineyard sleeps.

The tractor rests.

Its red paint glows in cold but bright sun.

But on schedule, the red headed ducks that appear every February returned to Lake Gervasi a few weeks ago. They have joined our iridescent mallards, and our patient, regal swans, who circle a small patch of open water waiting for the day they may begin gathering willow branches for their yet-to-be-built nest.

The predicted arrival of the migrating ducks with the startling gray backs and crimson heads lets us know that although we are poised in a lingering chill, the days are lengthening.

The sun, though cold, is bright.

Grape vine pruning will proceed double time as soon as conditions allow. In the meantime, we cut open shiny red grape bud scales, to see if the tissue inside is vivid green, and therefore, alive. (So far, our very cold hardy Minnesota and Cornell-bred vines are holding up well.)

Perhaps I will leave our vineyard swans some grape canes, to augment the willow boughs in the construction of their still un-built nest. Red canes entwined with golden willow branches seem fitting, somehow, for a late-breaking spring.