Rain, rain, come today!

Here we are (December 26, 2008) waiting for warm and wet weather to wash away our weeklong accumulation of snow and ice. Not the first time I've hoped the sky would open up.

Used to pine for rain every weekend during the winter when it was "pruning season". We had LOTS of apple trees in the back field when I was a lad - Kings, Gravensteins, Astracans, Transparent to name a few. The Spitzenberg by the Bergman's fence is the last of the apple orchard on the place (large, almost expired pear tree in front is an heirloom, too). There were also cherries and prunes, but as far as I was concerned these were low maintenance and user friendly because only the apples had to be pruned every year.

My dad was an ambitious, hard working guy in those days and on weekends in the winter there were always projects going on, trimming the trees among them. Every weekend he'd be out on the ladder snipping away and we'd be running around picking up suckers and hauling them to a burn pile. It seemed like all day, but probably wasn't. Unless it rained.

Pa didn't really like working wet and would find something else to do if it did. Too many bad weekends, though, with spring approaching it had to be done (HE sez) no matter what. A silver lining in this borderline child abuse was the brush fires we had when the work was done.

Pa was a pretty stern taskmaster, but also generous with the hot dogs and marshmallows. Sometimes in the afternoon looking at the neatly shaped trees there was even a grudging sense of satisfaction and sense of accomplishment. But I still "wished it would rain" tomorrow.