Pause before the push

Today was another slack day, with the ground hard frozen and the air sucking moisture away from everything.

I suppose it wasn't really a slack day, just felt that way to me. I did plenty of work today; cleaning up, pruning, writing software, working on assorted high tech and low tech machines. But in my mind there is a creaping and insidious awareness of the recently turned season.

The days are getting longer now. Bit by bit, even under the frost, plants are beginning to swell. A faint vibration in their osmotic attentions.

This year's growing season promises to be especially hectic. You see we've made arrangements with a local grocery store chain to start providing our high quality locally grown tomatoes to their produce departments. This will at least triple the amount of tomatoes we have to raise. Since tomatoes are something we do especially well demand may even be higher than that.

So my subconscious casts days like this in the light of a surging urgency. Only a matter of time until time will be the only matter.

Hoping you all are getting a fine and frisky start on this freaky 2008.