Stick Season

In the lovely state of Vermont there is a celebration of what local inhabitants call stick season. This "fifth season" of each year fits sometime between late October and the first serous snows of December. It begins after the leaves fall and is celebrated as a quiet time to relax and prepare a bit for winter without all the summer visitors and autumn foliage viewing, camera toting tourists. It is a time to breathe before the skiers and other winter sports people invade as they tend to do. I learned this interesting tidbit from my son, who used to live in Rutland, Vermont where he worked at the nearby Killington Ski Resort. Yes ... he was big into skiing at that time and the stick thing is just one of the interesting tidbits he has learned along his way. It came to mind recently when he heard a song by Noah Kahan about Stick Season and he shared all this info with me when there was a lull in the conversation when he was visiting recently.  Anyway ...

In Pennsylvania I suggest that stick season is the early days of spring, like right now,  when you discover what has been forced to the ground after a winter of blustering winds and the temporary cover of snow. This year, sticks are prevalent - maybe more than usual. I can't help but notice, on my way to the mailbox at the road, that even the newly emerged earth worms are having to crawl around and over them on their way to wherever it is that they go while they are above ground. It must be annoying for them.  It is sort of annoying for me as I try to avoid stepping on them, but I do enjoy the annual picking up of sticks for some reason. I pick them up one by one using muscles I have not used since the last stick season and pay for that later with muscle ouchies and what I call "the good tired" at the end of a working outside type day.  I burn some of the sticks, cut some and save it for firewood and just roll some of the "too big to handle" ones off to the side to deal with later or never. Some of my neighbors have already told me that they have enough firepit wood for the season and not to share with them again this year.  My sticks apparently are similar to the annual sharing of extra zucchini squash from an over abundant harvest of an over productive garden. If you live around here, you know how that can be. We tend to be zucchini rich and we like to share. 

Ah Spring -- the time of sticks, kite flying, tax preparation, and digging out your guide to surviving pot holes.

One more thing....  Can anyone else smell the worms when they first appear in these early days?  Just curious...