It's late January, and my almond tree is blooming.

What makes that so surprising is that I live in Minnesota.

I've long joked that I'm a Mediterranean trapped in the body of a Northern European. (The quip would actually read more accurately as “...having a perfectly fine time in the body of....”) Civilized people drink tea and wine and cook with olive oil. Barbarians drink coffee and beer and cook with (ugh) butter. Not that there's anything wrong with barbarism, understand. Some of my best friends.... And since I've certainly put away my share of brews down the years, I suppose that by my own definition that would make me semi-barbarous. Fine. See if I care.

Why in the world am I living in Minnesota, one might wonder? Short answer: love. But that's a story for another night. Right now it's late January and my almond tree is blooming. I just can't look at it enough.

I've always wanted to live in a place where I could walk out into the back yard and pick my own lemons, oranges, pomegranates, figs, olives, dates and almonds. (If I believed in reincarnation, I'd say: Canaanite. Since I don't, your guess is as good as mine. Where do these affinities come from?) Last time I got back from the Mediterranean, I realized it wasn't likely any time soon.

So I did the next best thing. Now I do have a lemon (orange, pomegranate, fig, olive, date, almond) tree in the back yard: during the summer, anyway. With first frost on the horizon, I trundle the pots in to our three-season back porch. That's where the trees are right now. My indoor-outdoor orchard. My movable forest.

Winter is long in Minnesota, and Oimelc is its cold heart. We're halfway through and by now even the non-pagans have started to notice the increase of light, but we've got another month of sub-zero coming up and we can realistically expect snow through April. Our March equinoctial gale is generally a blizzard.

And yet: here on the back porch, the almond tree has broken into delicate, fragile bloom, the flowers' faint pink heart-breaking in silhouette against the snow piled in the back yard.

Here in Winter's frozen heart: spring.

Photo: Paul B. Rucker

Boeotian Cloche Goddess reproduction (terracotta): Constance Tippett