surviving april

simple machines + endless labor

my aries season weapon(s) of choice: a japanese gardening sickle + sharpening stone

I still have some April sessions available, and added some mini readings—book one here!

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This my third crack at this post let’s hope something sticks. April is here and full of bluster. Saturn and Neptune are in Aries and they are Saturning and Neptuning. Everything worth having seems to be on the other side of endless toil. The cataclysmic backdrop of the 24 hour news cycle makes all of it seem a little futile, a little pointless.

In Tropical astrology, Aries is associated with the impulsive growth of spring. Every sprout, each flower extended in this tenuous time is a gamble. Maybe the buds will hold. But maybe they came too early and one more frost is coming too late. Crab apples, apricots and dandelions lead the charge around here, defiantly arriving in March. Because of an unusually hot spring, the cherries, pears, apples, and peaches have all flowered too. Our neighbor, Danny, will not get much sleep this month, as he tends fans and small fires and propane heaters nestled among his hundreds of small fruit trees, trying to ferry them through the chilly nights until the threat of frost has passed.

Saturn, currently traveling through the sign, is tied to the monotonous labor of agriculture. Even our small operation brings a heavy workload, especially as we’re rebuilding in our second season here. There are truckloads of soil and compost to be bought and hauled. Piles of brush to be dragged down to the lower field until its safe to burn again. The dog pen is getting bigger to include my weed operation, though this requires pawing through and transporting a pile of mostly rose bush trimmings that were perhaps an abandoned burn from the previous owners. It is the kind of pile that I imagine badgers or snakes or large field mice might like, and I give a little jump when I pull a severed, thorny limb out just so, its crunchy leaves making a suspicious slithering, whooshing sound.

The irrigation valves had to be cleaned out one by one, too, as chance apple seedlings and timothy grass crowd them, grateful for the steady moisture. I worked my way across the laterals on Saturday afternoon. One stalk at a time, one valve at a time. One fistful of grass at a time. This is prayer isn’t it? A kind of faith in our own relentlessness. Shovelful by shovelful. Each slicing swing a bead, a chant, a small promise. An oath to do the work that is yours to do. To just focus on the next little bit.

Spring and it’s labors bring gratitude for simple tools—shovels and rakes, pitch forks and machetes. Though I’m grateful for the modest machinery we own and utilize, these hand tools are what I return to. Prized developments of the iron age—a perfect fusion of Martian heat and Saturnian temperance. Pressure and vision. Patience and precision. This is what it takes to create a simple machine. A timesaver. A shoulder saver. A way to compensate for dull nails and brittle teeth. Something to help us bite or carve or chip or sever.

Our string trimmer is…haunted. Something is loose in the trigger assembly but only seems to be an issue some times. On Saturday, its battery was dead, so I grabbed a small sickle and a pocket sized sharpening stone, and sauntered off for a date with the overgrowth.

The sickle is balanced, light, and versatile. It’s easy to maneuver, and so long as you keep it sharp, it will easily slice through tall grass and dense ferns, even Siberian Elm saplings. It does not vibrate, is easy on the wrists, and it’s much easier to keep its blade sharp than it is to keep refilling weedwacker wire.

It also gets the mind to slow. A rhythm is found. Slice. Sharpen. Rest. Repeat.

Abstractly I dread the sheer labor of spring in a plant forward family. Tasks loom heavy over every weekend. They begin to blur as we lurch through the seasons, and in moments of overwhelm I tend toward mini meltdowns, bemoaning the Sisyphean experience of life here at the ancient orchard

But then I get into the work. I feel the pride and relief as unfinished becomes finished. I watch the trees bud and leaf in delight when they are cleared of dead weight, when the strangling sour grapevines are wrestled out of their limbs and the Siberian Elms—prolific beings that sprout 10 more heads at every felling—are cleared. Maintenance is a constant battle.

pluto getting a chin scratch last fall

Still, steady work is better than waiting. The longing delivered by Neptune, also present in Aries. We are in that, too. We found another lump on Pluto and she had it removed last Tuesday. If you are a praying person, put our sweet muppet in yours.

When we first adopted her in late 2022, she had a fist size mass removed from her mammary chain. It was apparently a hideous thing, prompting a visceral response from the surgeon; a grizzled man in his late 60’s who had just removed an eye from a 27 year old alpaca before he moved onto Pluto. In other words, this guy had seen some shit, and was very worried with what he found inside. He called me a few days before Christmas, and let me know that in fact, the mass was benign.

New vet, new mass, similar exaggerated response. Let’s hope we all get lucky one more time. But if we don’t, we will find a way, too. Won’t we? And until we do, we keep returning to the work that is ours. The ceiling fans gathering dust in the mud room that must be cleaned and mounted, the fence line that needs clearing, the furrows full of bindweed, the thirsty fields and roots beneath the returning grasses and clover that long for flooding. The eager seedlings that need up potting, raised beds to assemble and fill, gate posts to set and the kitchen garden to plant. The little prayers that tell whoever is watching that we are serious, are doing our part, and hope that they are, too.

horoscopes + more support

Looking for your Aries Season horoscopes? You can find them here. Want more support, or think a pal could use some? Book a session or buy a gift card here!

nm come hang!