The Would-Be Farm: First Green is –– Pink.

Mr. Linton and I have managed to get to the Would-Be Farm for a few Aprils in a row. The cruellest month* offers a couple of attractive trade-offs. We might see snow, but there are blessedly few biting insects. 

This time of year, it's possible to watch spring take hold of bare bones of the land.

From Basecamp (with a roaring campfire going, because it's a raw 45° F and the wind is gusting to the mid 20's out of the long barrel of the valley), the hillsides change color almost by the minute.

​The tree-trunks begin early April the same grey-brown as the bare granite. The carpet of autumn leaves has been bleached tan. Only the odd pine tree gives color along the horizon.

Then comes a faint pinkening. The first buds, contrary to Robert Frost's lovely poem, are scarlet.

The tone of grey morphs so subtly –– and so improbably –– into this first color of spring that it's quite possible to see it for half a lifetime before recognizing the hue. 

​I mean, really -- red?

A closer look provides the evidence. American elms splash out in red buds, delicious to the porcupine. 
​

I know, blurry. Here's maybe a better image:

And in the beleaguered new apple orchard, after a winter spent as an hors d'oervers station for the local deer, the first tiny signs of vegetable life look like droplets of blood. Or maybe like those wee scarlet spiders that live in old leaves. Spider mites. 

A pinhead speck of cardinal-red on the sticks of apple saplings, but not crawling. Tragically out-of-focus when I snapped their picture on the single afternoon when they first appeared. Overnight, they grew into what you expect in a bud:

Apple tree survives winter massacre! Eternal spring hopes: hope springs eternal!

Mr. Frost ends his lovely poem with "Nothing gold can stay."

I agree, except as I see it, it's nothing pink that can stay.


*April is not just "the cruellest month/breeding. Lilacs from dead ground" –– it's Poetry month.