Ever so beautiful.

Brief selection from: Payne Hollow by Harlan Hubbard

In winter, woodcutting; in summer, gardening. Our calendar is never so precisely divided, for cookwood must be rustled up in summer and the garden is a year-round concern.

All our living is regulated by the revolving seasons. They determine what we do, what we think and talk about, what we eat, the pattern of each day. Our house adjusts to the seasons, opening in the summer and closing against the winter's cold. The time of our getting up in the morning depends on when the sun rises. Who would want to lie abed in a summer dawn, when the air is filled with birdsong? On the other hand, there is not much use getting up in the dark, even during the shortest days of winter; yet I often do so, assisted in extending the day by a late-rising moon, which furnishes light enough for woodcutting, even when it shines through a layer of cloud. It is never so dark that my feet cannot find their way on known paths. Firewood or something is always waiting to be carried up the hill. I can grind flour by touch. A lantern provides enough light for many other jobs — threshing beans, cracking nuts, sharpening an axe. The hungry goats do not mind being waked up, fed and milked at an early hour. Writing goes well, close to a stove where a little fire burns; or I just sit there in that brief period of detachment between night and day, my thoughts following strange paths unknown to sleep or waking.

Sometimes the dark becomes wearisome, I feel my loneliness and look in vain for the faintest glow in the eastern sky or for a lighted window across the river. When at last the strengthening light brings release it seems to promise fair and untried fields of action. All too soon the colors of dawn fade and the familiar world reveals itself.

March, not January, is the two-faced month, for its weather can be that of winter or spring. In our calendar the balance swings from woodcutting to gardening in March. There come a few warm, balmy days when fires are allowed to die and a tantalizing smell of spring is in the air. I take a favorite hoe from its winter resting place and go down into what was last year's garden…

… The very beginning is perhaps the best part of a garden. Now the breeze feels as soft and sweet as it used to on the first spring day that I could go barefoot. The whistle of a cardinal comes from far off through the hazy air. The sun, riding higher in the sky, arouses not only the buds and seeds but also the dormant hopes of the gardener. The memory of past mistakes and failure has been washed out by winter rain. This year his garden will be the best ever.