Thursday Thirteen #950

Things that March teaches you -

1. Patience, because the ground thaws when it’s ready and not a day sooner.

2. Timing, because there a narrow space between too early and too late. Plant too early, you lose your seedlings. Wait too long, and the heat will burn them.

3. When to wait, especially when mud or weather would only punish you for pushing ahead. Take a tractor through a muddy field and you'll pay for it later when you have to mow.

4. When to act, catching the small openings March gives you before they close again. That means grabbing a warm day to clear the weeds from the garden or a wet day to catch up on reading.

5. How to read mud, because its color, its pull, all tell a story about the week that was and the week that will be.

6. How to read sky, noticing which clouds mean “go” and which mean “wrap it up.” Stay too long and you'll find yourself in an early thunderstorm.

7. How to read yourself, the places where winter still lingers in your body. You'll know it by the ache in your bones.

8. The value of a good list when everything feels half-started. It's so easy to forget that you've already bought zucchini seeds.

9. The value of ignoring that list when the day rearranges itself. Take the time to forget the list and watch the sunset. There's enormous value in that soft beauty.

10. What’s predictable: the same gates, the same low spots, the same chores returning on cue. They're rather endless on a farm. Actually, they're endless in life, they just change their shape.

11. What never is predictable are surprises, equipment breakdowns, fast-brewing storms that rewrite the day.

12. What returns, like green grass, birdsong, light in the evening, and the sense of a year beginning again.

13. What doesn’t return, like the birds that nested in the tree that fell over during the ice storm, and how to keep working with what remains, like what to do with those broken limbs.

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Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here if you want to read other Thursday Thirteens and/or play along. I've been playing for a while, and this is my 950th time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday. Or so sayth the Blogger counter, anyway.