Life is short and sweet ~ May 2, 1996

David Heiller

Cindy and I went to the woods on Sunday evening, April 28, with the intention of pulling our 53 maple taps. I carried a hammer along for the purpose.

We figured this late in the season, the buds must be full of sap. When that happens, the sap turns a tannish color and becomes “bud sap.” That means it’s time to pull the taps, because bud sap is bitter and makes poor syrup.

But when we got to the woods, the buckets were full of clear sap, and instead pulling 53 taps, we gathered about 53 gallons of sap.

Those cold nights we had last week, the ones that everyone was complaining about, kept the maples pumping sap. Every cloud has a silver lining.

David understood the sweetness of life.

Part of my territory in the sugar bush is located near a spring, and that spring was full of frogs on Sunday night. Peepers, and they were living up to their name. They were so loud it almost hurt my ears. But it was a glorious sound to hear, especially when I thought of that same ground just a month ago, when we tapped the trees, covered with two feet of snow

It made me think of how fast spring comes along, and how fast things change. It seemed like almost overnight the snow in the woods was gone and the garden was bare and the parsnips were frying in the skillet.

Parsnips are one of my favorite vegetables. You plant them in the spring, then weed them and thin them, and then you forget about them. Some people dig them up in the fall, but Alvin Jensen told me to leave them all winter, and they taste even better in the spring, and he’s right.

Hedda cooked spring parsnips
 for Red, making life sweet.

They seem sweeter in the spring. Maybe the cold weather does that. There’s probably a scientific reason, just like there is a scientific explanation for being able to take 35 gallons of sap from a tree and boil it down into a gallon of something that is too good for words to describe.

They both border on miraculous to me. How could those parsnips stay fresh in the ground during the coldest winter on record? How did they handle that February 3 day when neighbor John Filtz had minus 56 on his thermometer?

Then again maybe we are so anxious to taste something fresh from the garden that we just think the parsnips are sweeter.

It doesn’t really matter. It’s fun to eat them, and fun to give them away. Red Hansen came in for some. He likes to have Hertha boil them, then fry them in butter and put brown sugar on them. Red is on a low-fat, low-sugar diet, but that doesn’t stop him from enjoying his parsnips.

David and Noah after breakfast.

Leona Schultz came in for her bag full too. She doesn’t bother boiling them. She just cuts the up the long way and fries them. She used to boil them first, but she saw all that good sweet juice laying in the bottom of the pot and thought it was too precious to waste, so she just fries them straight.

We were sitting at coffee break on Monday afternoon, and Cindy Jensen was talking about the upcoming graduation of her daughter Katie. Hazel Serritslev couldn’t believe Katie was graduating already. Neither could Lynn’s Storrar. Neither could Cindy Jensen!

They all knew in their minds that Katie was graduating. But all of a sudden it didn’t see possible. All of a sudden it had come so fast, too fast.

Malika and Mackenzie with David,
enjoying some sweetness.

I think about that when I look at our two kids Noah and Malika. They are growing out of shoes and clothes almost every other month. They are like the tomato plants in our living room, that seem to grow an inch a day.

Malika asked me on Sunday to jump on the trampoline with her. I was busy, but I did. Later Noah asked to play a little football with me. I stopped my gardening and did that too.

There was a time in my life when I might have said no. But those times are becoming less frequent. I can see them growing up too fast. Like the parsnips and maple syrup that remind me that life is short and sweet.