Rumbling tractors first sign of spring

My favorite April weather forecast: sunshine followed by men on tractors.

Nothing marks the advent of a true spring and warming ground than the appearance of tractors plowing rich, dark soil into neat furrows and ultimately into fields ready for planting.

I saw the pattern repeated for decades of springs, many spent in rural Snohomish County. Spring lambs and kids arrived in the cold mornings of January and February. Newborn calves followed in March, along with daffodils down by the pond and a hint of green in the flowerbeds marking tulips ready to pop.

But when the tractors began to rumble out of barns and sheds to reclaim fallow fields, I saw them as harbingers of yet another rich harvest of berries, vegetables and grains.

If you are as old as I am, you probably remember a time when Sunday afternoon drives with the family usually resumed in the warmth of April after a winter hiatus. We’d pile the kids in the car and drive through the Stillaguamish Valley or north to the Skagit Valley.

There were Aprils, long before anyone even imagined a tulip festival, when we headed for Fir Island to see if Bill Roozen’s tulips were in bloom. He and his wife came from The Netherlands as young marrieds, bringing with them bulbs from the old country. Year after year, on a few acres of ground near their farmhouse, they planted the tulip and daffodil bulbs, which bloomed and produced more bulbs that could be harvested and sold.

Bill once told me that he and his wife had very little money for family entertainment, so a big treat for their six children was a drive in the family station wagon on Sunday afternoon to Camano Island. On the way home they’d stop in Stanwood for ice cream cones.

I’m not sure as we talked that day three decades ago he envisioned a time when the business he started and his children carried forward, Washington Bulb Co., would fill 1,200 acres in Skagit Valley with tulips, daffodils and irises, and be the largest such bulb business in the world.

The old orchard, once adjacent to the family’s farmhouse, is now part of a three-acre show garden with 200,000 spring flowering bulbs. Roozengaarde (Roozen’s garden), established in 1985, sponsors the annual Skagit Valley Tulip Festival, which draws hundreds of thousands of visitors to the valley.

Bumper-to-bumper traffic, massive tour buses and camera-laden tourists have replaced the days of an easy drive through the valley to check out Bill’s tulips

At $3 a gallon for gas and $1.50 to $3 for an ice cream cone, it’s not exactly a cheap family outing anymore, either. Still, Sunday drives remain among the special childhood memories we gave our children, gifts that last forever.

This afternoon, as I look out my patio door I can see dozens of red and yellow tulips bursting into bloom. These are the descendants of the same bulbs I bought decades ago at Roozengaarde while trying to corral three rambunctious youngsters.

There was a patch of thick, green lawn adjacent to the orchard, and children (including my boys) rolled in it, did summersaults, and pranced with the same energy as the young spring lambs frolicking in valley pastures.

I don’t think I’ll ever tire of seeing the newborn lambs by their mothers’ sides or children rolling around in green grass joyous to be loose on one of the first warm days of spring

My bulbs from Roozen’s were moved from Stanwood to Camano Island and finally to Soap Lake. They should have been discarded years ago and replaced by new ones. We just never seem to get around to digging them up.

Despite being basically ignored, rarely separated, and enduring long, hot summers, those bulbs just keep coming back year after year.

Just like sunshine and stubborn tulips, spring comes to us with great promise. If we are faithful to the earth, that which is sown in spring will nourish our bodies and our souls through the seasons that follow.

Let us never fail to be grateful for spring’s promise … or men (and women) on tractors.

Linda Bryant Smith writes about life as a senior citizen and the issues that concern, annoy and often irritate the heck out of her now that she lives in a world where nothing is ever truly fixed but her income. You can e-mail her at ljbryantsmith@yahoo.com.