“Spring is sooner recognized by plants than by men,” goes the Chinese proverb. But this man surely is starting to take notice. For the signs of spring neither can be missed nor ignored.
The front yard’s silver maple buds are beginning to burst forth. The crimson red offers a beautiful contrast to the gray-white bark.
“Daffodil row,” along the front sidewalk and fertilized in the fall with rich mushroom manure, is starting to show life. Just the tips are peeking through. Hopefully, they won’t have to be, as they were last year, covered in a thick blanket of straw to protect them from a late freeze.
Under that silver maple, the crocuses have flowered. So, too, have a variety of hyacinths. And there’s something else coming up as well. Those somethings are sprouting in a symmetrical pattern. But for the life of the planter, he can’t remember what they might be.
There’s no doubt, however, what that tell-tale clump of green spikes is – it’s the first of the wild chives that will prove to be the perfect accoutrement to a nice potato and leek soup that soon might grace the stove.
Can the buttercups be far behind?
Out back, towering over the deck, the last of the crab apple tree’s fruits, now shriveled from the hard winter, are being devoured by birds and squirrels. While any blooms are at least a solid six or seven weeks off, it’s as if the wildlife is tidying things up to herald their breathtaking explosion in white.
Those same squirrels have been busy partaking of the nuts they stored last fall in nature’s pantry. That is, in any soil anywhere easily excavatable.
There’s also something new out back, or at least heretofore unnoticed:
Two yards down, in the high hollow of an old tree long ago “topped” badly and now diseased, a raccoon family has taken up tenancy. And if nature has taken its course, come late April or early May a brood of kits, as many as eight at a time, will be born.
It’s either a tip of the hat to the local ecosystem or an indication that unsecured garbage cans are running rampant in the neighborhood.
Oh, surely there will be more snow. And, yes, just as surely steps also might be needed to protect other tender shoots and flowers of this and of that with straw or mulch. But spring’s advance will not be stopped.
“Behold!” poet P.B. Shelley exhorted:
“Spring sweeps over the world again,
Shedding soft dews from her ethereal wings;
Flowers on the mountains, fruits over the plain,
And music on the waves and woods, she flings,
And love on all that lives, and calm on lifeless things.”
Colin McNickle is a senior fellow and media specialist at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
