A surprise this morning when I went out to the cabin to make tofu was seeing the fruiting plum trees in full bloom. Last year the plums produced a bounty of sweet plums. Hopefully they will this year too.

An old nest from last year remains in a young alder by the pond. Soon it will be hidden by new leaves. I’ve walked by this tree all winter and never noticed the nest. Or have I seen it before and forgot about it. Perhaps that is the joy of going senile. You can be surprised by the same thing over and over again. Will some bird use the nest again? It will be interesting to see.

A series of trivial events put me on Bow Hill Road at the spot at 4:12 p.m. this afternoon where a large flock of Snow Geese crossed overhead on their way north. First, I forgot to take some mail with me when I made deliveries this morning. So I had to bicycle down to the post office in the afternoon.

I would have passed by the spot earlier and missed the Snow Geese, but the tires on my bicycle were low, so I had to pump air into them.

A few other forgettable events delayed me a minute here, a minute there. But not so much that I didn’t have the time to stop when I heard the Snow Geese approaching. The Bow Post Office closes at 4:30 p.m. However, I was within minutes of the post office, so I had the time to stop and enjoy the sight of the Snow Geese leaving. Was this their final flight out of the Skagit Valley? I don’t know. But in the direction they were flying, there’s no flat land to land until the other side of the Chuckanuts.

The peculiar thing about Snow Geese is the meandering threads they form in the sky when they fly. They don’t make the perfect V formations of Canada Geese. They fly in such numbers that their meandering lines can stretch for miles.

And I would have missed the spectacle if I had remembered to take the mail with me this morning.

Sunday’s blustery winds knocked cherry blossoms off the tree. Yesterday morning, frost dusted the blossoms. Frost is not the first thing that comes to mind when I picture cherry blossoms.

A few more sunny days and the cherry blossoms will be in full bloom.

I saw a bee flying about the cherry blossoms. Where is it spending these frigid nights?

The first of the salmon berries are in bloom. So are plenty of skunk cabbage. They’d look lovely in a vase, in your house, though the stench would soon drive you out of your house.

This is what it looks like on the other side. On the other side of what? On the other side of the year where nights are longer than days. This far north, we are now on the side of the year where days are longer than nights.

There are other ways to divide the year into two. You have the time of the year when the days are getting longer and the time of the year when the nights are getting longer. These methods divide the year into equal halves.

Here in the Skagit Valley you could also divide the year into the time when there are swans, and the time when there are no swans. There are just a few swans here and there. Soon we will be in the time of year when there are no swans. But all is not hopeless, weeping and gnashing of teeth, sackcloth and ashes. We may be slipping into the time of year when there are no swans flying around, but as it is the time of year when the days are longer than the nights, joy and happiness abounds.

A more extreme division of the year is the time of year when there are cherry buds and blossoms, and the time of year when there are not. If I could pick the time of year, no the day I die, it would be a day of blue skies, puffy clouds, and cherry trees in full bloom. Wheel me out underneath a blooming cherry tree on a sunny day and let that be the last thing I see, the fragrance of cherry blossoms the last thing I breathe, the buzzing of bees in the cherry blossoms the last thing I hear.