If you love the orchard, you know that March is the shortest month of the year—and the most wonderful. Sadly, it’s already a fifth of the way done. How does it go by so fast? It’s like a swirling whitewater stream in… spring. Or the slippery slope down an icy mountain. Or maybe just a tornado.

The calendarists say that February is the shortest month and that 30 days hath September, April, June and November and all that. But March has them all beat in the shortest department. March 1st arrives, you open the door, step out into the month, blink a few times and it’s over. The days are suddenly long, yet there’s not enough hours to get all the spring chores done - even if I get up early, go to bed late and am outside all day long in the sun, melting snow and the mud. Prune prune prune! Cut wood! Start seeds! Boil sap! Collect scions!

It could be that March is so short because I thought I had lots of time to do all that stuff in December, January and February and now—darn it—all those days are gone. Soon I’ll be digging trees again. So let others go to the islands and sit on the beach. I won’t miss them. I’m too busy here, swinging from apple trees, soaking in those glorious, windy, sunny, snowy, muddy, fleeting days of March.