We mostly let the orchard go last year, benign neglect except for the occasional weeding around the base of each tree. March was spent pruning the aftermath, sixty trees in total, some mature, most not. What was once compacted pasture has become tidy alleys of apple, sour cherry and elderberry.

Pruning is like hedging, the impulse at odds with the requirement for eventual success. I tend to double down while Heath is more measured, more patient. The orchard prefers his hand.

I turn to weeding, the physicality a good match for my seasonal restlessness. Bindweed blurs the edges of every path, burdock spreading and impossible to uproot.

Willow appears first, our woven fence covered in catkins by early April. We planted five weeping willows in our swale several years ago, an ode to my love affair with a neighbor's perfect tree. Willow gives what so many others reserve for decades, doubling and tripling year over year.

We lost two apples and four cherries over the winter, autopsy unclear. The math is still encouraging.

We start seeds ten weeks out from our last hard frost, some unknowable date around mid-May. More flowers this year, more chicory.

PHOTOGRAPHY: MCKENZIE TAPLIN