Persephone

The ancients had a goddess for this day: Persephone.

Whisked away to the underworld after the harvest, Persephone was said to take with her all that was green and vital, leaving mortals behind to languish in a barren realm. 

And then, this joyous day, the vernal equinox. From a cleft in the earth, Persephone was said to return, and once more, the world would be awash in color and rampant with new growth.

Today, the first day of spring, found us out in the vineyard, continuing the work we began many cold months ago: pruning back last season's grape canes, leaving behind just those few choice buds we select to bear this season's fruit.

Was the vineyard suddenly different today? Were we awash in color? Did the earth's mantle cleave and release a new birth of life?

Well, all things are relative.

This first day of spring in Canton, Ohio, the sky was leaden.

Snow flurries fell.

A raw wind blew.

Although the blanket of white we tromped through for most of our winter was largely gone, it was not replaced by a verdant carpet, but rather by mud and a thatch of brown turf.

As we finished up the Marquette block and made steady progress through the Frontenac Gris, the rhythm of stainless steel blades snapping through last summer's now dormant growth competed with raucous avian rivalries from a rapidly thawing lake.

Each pruning cut revealed the familiar kiwi green that has fed our winter weary souls through a long frigid season: the response of our resilient grape vines to a season of brutal cold. Encased in dull brown cells of insulating tissue, the vital force of each plant remained visible, even in the dim light of a sun shrouded by flurries. 

And yet, today, something WAS different:

Pruning cut, March 20, 2014

At a certain point in the afternoon, as the sun burned through gray, the brown turf warmed just a few more degrees. 

Not enough warmth to feel a discernible difference on wind chaffed skin, but enough to trigger the movement of vital fluids from grape roots drenched within a thawing terrain. 

Up through craggy six-year old trunks, through cordons stretched horizontally across galvanized trellis wire, and eventually, out, out into the sunshine, the vital fluids of each plant flowed.

The difference we experienced today: those kiwi green pruning cuts glistened.

Sap is rising. The grape vines bled, which is a good and beautiful thing.

Nutrients and vitality pulsed from the ground below, priming each vine's vascular system, cleansing each pruning wound.

As our clay soil thaws and spring rains fall, our terrain will likely persist for some time in its sodden state. (Which is hardly surprising in our region of the world, where a massive clay bed fed the nation's leading paving brick industry, centered right here in Canton, Ohio.)

Canton paving bricks in autumn, a legacy of our terrain.

Days will arrive (soon, we hope) when bright sun will shine, and the temperature will rise above fifty.

On those days, our pruning cuts will gush, and we will delight, sure of Persephone's return.

Perhaps the earth did not cleave in our vineyard soil today.

But nonetheless, something new and vital rose from the earth below.

Perhaps it was not as dramatic as classical depictions of Persephone's return from exile in the underworld.

But for those of us who toil  routinely through seemingly changeless seasons, our reward is being present for subtle shifts in the status quo.

Today's pruning cuts were no different from thousands we made all winter.

Except that they WERE. 

They glowed, saturated with nectar arising from a wakening earth.

Frederic Leighton's Return of Persephone (1821)

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.