The Blinding Excitement of Spring

I woke this morning to the sound of Mourning Doves chanting their calming mantra outside our cracked window. It was still, yet loud, the cacophony of country living.

It is spring, and almost overnight every tree is budding, tiny leaves popping out of seemingly nowhere. The grass is a mat of vibrant green, and the birds and squirrels are suddenly moving hurriedly - racing by the window in a flurry of activity. It is time.

Spring is hope. It is a deep-in-the-gut feeling that seems to apply to everything, from anticipating an amazing morel mushroom season to hoping the world will soon be a better place. The green of spring is a boost of energy to the body; it holds the seeds of the possibility, of getting things done. It is the color of youth, of excited anticipation.

My first hope getting our barn project done, soon. It is moving along, but oh so slowly. Now there are windows, and walls (with no drywall) inside. But it feels like a project that won’t get to the finish line, ever—always something else to order, decisions to be made, some task to complete before you can do the thing you really want to do. But I can now see the finish line, and feel the excitement of actually having a place where people can stay (and eat) on the farm! (Please contact me if you'd like to organize a stay in it or a small gathering - I hope it is actually up and running by July!)

It is going to be beautiful. Someday soon.

The goats on the other hand express spring by having kids, lots of them this year. After our first few sets of triplets, the vet commented that “there are a lot of triplets this year,” a strange synergy on farms around the region. The kids are joy embodied, jumping around and running, like three-year olds on the playground.

The new kids on the block

Yet nowhere is the hope of spring more apparent than in the dream of the future garden. The seeds in the envelope are so tiny, barely a speck in one’s hand…it is hard to envision how it might grow millions of times its own size and produce so much food. The amount of time we will have to spend tending to the garden - weeding, harvesting, nurturing the plants - may be enormous, and the battles with creatures big and small, infuriating.

But who thinks of that in the deliciousness of spring! The more seeds planted the better!

And so we keep on planting, dreaming of the bounty that will soon be ours (in the vision, without bugs, watering, or weeding…) the excitement of it all overriding our knowledge that so much likely can and will go wrong or that this simple act of planting seeds may end up stealing away all of our precious time mid-summer. The fun of placing a seed in the dirt and transforming a field that previously only grew corn or soybeans into a place of nutrition and health, blinds our reasoning.

Yet perhaps that is part of the mystery of seeds, their sneaky ability to get planted, to grow, to produce. And in this fertile Iowa soil, there is just no sense trying to stop them.

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Jane Nguyen, The Asian Iowan, West Des Moines

John Naughton: My Life, in Color, Des Moines

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Barry Piatt: Piatt on Politics: Behind the Curtains, Washington, D.C.

Macey Spensley, The Midwest Creative, Davenport and Des Moines

Mary Swander: Mary Swander’s Buggy Land, Kalona

Mary Swander: Mary Swander’s Emerging Voices, Kalona

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Ed Tibbetts: Along the Mississippi, Davenport

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