The patterns of nature are more easily seen, when you live out in the sticks. There's more nature, even if it's a much-modified version of nature, put there by farming. You see the seasons in the winter wheat: planted in the first frosty air of October, then small, hopeful green sprouts, if lucky, by mid-November. Those wee green sprouts bring hope to the long nights and short days we get at 40 degrees north.
Much of Colorado becomes its normal shade(s) of brown: brown fields, brown trees, brown dead leaves, brown stalks of corn stubble....you get the picture. To see some green, peeking out, be it ever so small, and ever so delicate, is to remind us Children of the Snow, that promise lies in those green tufts of life, that this drab sea of brown dirt and white drifts of snow will soon yield the promise of another completed trip around the sun, the Sun that warms both the fields and the hearts of those who depend on its trip back up to the Northern Star.
Then, the snows of winter cover those tiny, green signals, of a spring and summer to come. You watch as the furrows ebb and flow, with the falling and melting snows.
Come March, as the days lengthen, the green sprouts grow ever more towards the sun, but they know Colorado, and they know not to trust the sometimes-brilliant sunshine and ofttimes warm temperatures, for they remember what a capricious mother, Nature is.
April, then May, and finally, the rains of late spring arrive (or, more often than not, the center-pivot sprinklers begin their endless 'round the Rosie of farm fields) and the wheat begins to reach for the heavens.
Come July, right around the 4th--when the corn becomes knee high!--the wheat has pushed up its green gown of spring growth, then turns golden brown in the high altitude sun.
What's this got to do with Harvey?
Well, in those warming days of April and May, "*The Harv*" will be taken out of its winter slumber, and preparations will begin to get back on the road, again!
Stay tuned!
