Quarantining has prompted a delightful rapport with the Sugar Tyme crabapple in our front yard.  As winter left and spring arrived, I watched her bare branches come into leaf. When she flowered, that stunning trick of scent-memory flung me right back to senior year in college. Gnawing ambivalence overtook me: there are exams to study for, but it’s just too beautiful to go inside and hit the books. Then flowers fell and the tree came into full leaf . The present shifted once again and those leaves, so recently green, blushed scarlet and weeks later, let go.  Soon after came this bounty of berries — an open pantry for the squirrels.

And now, the snows arrives. Sugar Tyme and I begin our sacred journey once again.

photo courtest of Debra Darvick