Spring is in the air. The farm is bustling with activity, the days are getting longer and the sun is reaching higher. All fields have been ploughed; the land is a bare brown, prone to dust-devil swirls when the wind kicks up. We planted 600 plum trees on a beautifully warm sunny day; 80 more will go in this week. We enclosed our ‘potager’ (flower and vegetable garden); I dug trenches to guide the waterflow, then planted strawberries and English peas. New floodgates are installed and water again floods our land. We are ready for a new season.

It is not only human activity that indicates spring is on the way, it is more than anything the changes in nature that make me notice. In Colorado, around this time of year I would smell fall in the air. I donot associate early spring with smell, rather the quality of the light changes, the sounds are different, the air seems lighter. The almond tree shows that my senses have not betrayed me; one early afternoon it bursts into glorious, white, unbridled bloom. Hope for an almond crop this year is slim; it is unlikely that we will have no frost in the next three weeks. Every morning I visit the tree and check its blossom, hoping against hope that the low temperatures did not affect it, and every day it stoically remains in bloom. I am overjoyed until I learn that it is not the blossom that is susceptible to frost, rather it is the earliest formation of the bud, when the fruit is nothing but a droplet, high in water content, that frost will decimate its development. Several more risky weeks to come.   

I have noticed the changes in birdlife. In Colorado the western meadowlark, a yellow-breasted bird, heralds spring from every high post it can find, singing its cascading song loud and clear into the world, even when the ground is still dusted with snow. To my surprise I find a similar bird here. One day from the top of the apple tree I hear a meadowlark-like song; a red-breasted bird sings its joy to the world. Despite the difference in color it turns out the same bird. I see the first hummingbird (Dutch: kolibri) of the season drinking from a salmon-colored blossom in our front yard. It is a glitter of iridescent green, purple and red. It returns several afternoons before we lose track of its where-abouts. For a couple of days now, parrots have checked out the old caracara nest in the walnut tree next to our house. The nest is a rambling affair of sticks and twigs balancing precariously on one of the lower branches. The parrot flock consists of five birds, noisily chattering as one can expect from these social birds. They make communal nests so they can keep up their talk. I am glad when I see this flock move on. To be awakened day after day by these loud-mouth birds is not my idea  of a pleasant morning. We see the black-necked swan on a nearby lake and I know spring is around the corner.