March 21, 2026

Right in the middle of the shortest and most fun month of the year, you get this incredible bonus: Spring! It’s here with all its Earth, Wind and Fire. If you think that the rawness of March resembles November, think again. There is immense power right below the surface of all that mud, and it’s about to explode. It does it every year. This ain’t NO-vember. The tide went out six months ago. Now it’s coming in, and nothing will stop it.  

“It’s Spring, it’s Spring, Springtime again…” So sings the ensemble of Sun Ra and six of his “Arkestra- mates" on the ethereal 1979 album, “Sleeping Beauty,” by Sun Ra and his Intergalactic Myth Science Solar Arkestra. There’s only three tunes on the album. One of the others (a personal fav) is “Door of the Cosmos,” with the lyric, “Love and life interested me so, that I dared to knock on the door of the Cosmos.”

Hilly, Colby & Red Astrachan. March 21, 2026

So why not dare to knock on the door? As Dylan sang, “Knock, knock, knocking on Heaven’s door.” Or as Matthew sang many springs ago, “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you…” It’s March, it’s spring. The door is open. We’re cutting the last of the scionwood. We’re about to plunge into the last big push to get the apple trees all pruned. No time to dawdle.    

That being said Cammy and I did take a short break and headed Downeast to visit friends. We spent much of our visit walking along the shorelands of Sorrento and in the magical spruce and cedar woods along Frenchman’s Bay. One of the trees we visited was a stunted, old, gnarled Red Astrachan. It certainly hadn’t been pruned in fifty years (or maybe sixty), and it looked happy as can be. After all, it’s spring.