Bud

Ready for the the other side of winter, the buds on my pear and plum trees are set.

I've been been busy getting my house winterized: weather-stripping, caulking cracks, big sheets of plexiglass on my basement windows. The leaves are raked, bagged and gone, grape vine ditto, gardens stripped, hose wrapped up, chairs and tables put away. Okay, let the snow fall and the north cold wind blow; I'll be snug (I hope.)

The trees have less to do, and start as the days get short: no more growth, leaves turn and drop, and on the cellular level, water concentrations fall so sugar concentrations go up, inhibiting freezing. It's called 'hardening off.'

But it's your buds that are the toughest, situated at the very tips of twigs, right where finger tips would be on me (and I know how cold those get). Yet they're well formed, tightly packed inside glossy bud scales, hunkered down. You pears I planted this summer have confident buds but you I planted last year, stripped as you were by worms in May, have tiny tentative terminal buds and your lateral ones are better felt than seen. Hard times leave their mark.

I look for egg clusters, but see none. That little white patch at the root of the bud? I scrape it gently with my fingernail. No, it's simply one of the normal colors.

Each tree species, each variety has its own type of bud, or even bud cluster. The oak buds on the trees out back are bundled like rockets. I have no beeches but love to see the angular dagger buds on those hardy trees.

Later, when snow is pelting my window and I look out from my warm place, I'll see you out there, sleet-slashed, wind-whipped, and hope your little bud helmets help as you meet winter head on. Are we still going to meet come spring?