April 1

April

My seedlings that I planted two weeks ago are marching along, albeit slowly. Not every wildflower seed I planted germinated, though I suppose one or more could still show signs of life in the days to come. Here is my tally, thus far, given with the number of days to germinate:

Rose of Sharon              9          Butter –n- eggs             ?

Sweet William Catchfly 4          New England Aster      5

Balloon Flower              11         Evening Primrose         12

Rose Campion              6          Dock                            6

Dandelion                    15         Queen Anne’s Lace       9

Red Clover                   21         Lunaria annua              12

Burdock                        17

The tiny seedlings are still at the cotyledon stage, and each differs in form from the other, somewhat reflective of what the parent will become. They are all little forests of green canopies, and I enjoy lifting the clear plastic lid to smell the Earthy potting soil.

My favorite is the Lunaria, and I am hopeful the seedling will last until I can transplant it.

March 31

March at an end, and I am glad to bid farewell to this transitional month, which was more like February and less like April.

Still, the changes have come, and if we were able to suddenly compare how things looked and felt at the beginning of the month to how it appears today, we would scarcely believe the progress we’ve made. This is the way of March, slow changes that really do add up, preparing us for the pace of explosive growth that is soon to happen.

The yellow finches outside our dooryard are showing late March. Just three weeks ago, they were uniformly drab, hardly distinguishable from the house finches that visit the feeder. Today I see them mottled yellow and grey, and I know that each passing day will see less of the grey and more of the brilliant yellow.

Things are coming along, and we feel the spring beginning to accelerate.

March 30

Our front dooryard is enclosed by a small section of split rail fence, which serves as a gate into an alcove that leads to the door to the mudroom. This particular place of the house receives more daily sunshine than any other, and it is the first patch to melt in the spring sunshine. It is also a spot where we’ve planted several early spring bulbs throughout the years, mostly so that we can look for color when the spring hesitantly arrives.

This morning I noticed two yellow and two purple patches of color amid the mulch we put down last fall. There was also the hint of white.

The day warmed quickly into the upper 40s, with clear skies and a brilliant sunshine upon the ground. Late that afternoon, I made a point of checking on those spots of colors, and sure enough they had emerged into full bloom in the span of only several hours. We had two yellow and 2 purple crocuses and a handful of snowdrops, our first real spring flowers.

March 29

March is exiting like the lamb it would appear. After so long in our wanting some substance to the hope that spring will arrive in full measure, today has started with a brilliant sunrise, still air, and temperatures climbing into the 40s at 7:00 am.

I took the dogs for a walk to the lower fields on the northwest corner of Anna Maria just after sunrise. There is a break in the border woods of the college that gives access to a two-track which leads to the farm’s roughly 8 acres of land used for vegetables. Now of course, the field remains snow covered, with remnant stalks of corn poking through the snow, small rows of stubble from last year’s growth in full.

As we walked the road eastward up the slope toward the upper main field, it was impossible to miss the signs all around of spring’s coming. I stopped for a moment, simply to listen and observe those things that only a few weeks ago seemed as though they would never arrive. In the air, birds all around were calling, titmice, cardinals, chick-a-dees, robins, and red-winged blackbirds, each having conversations as if to say aloud, “it is here. It is here.”

The sere remnants of last year’s golden rod and nested cups of Queen Anne’s Lace were beautifully backlit in the sunshine, golden brown against the crystalline snow. Patches of Earth, exposed by drifts and warming sun, showed hints of new green shoots of what will become this year’s tall grass.

I closed my eyes and put my face to the sun, listening to the sounds and smelling the Earth-tinged air, warmth of the spring sunshine reminding me that things do begin anew.

March 28

A mile and a half north of town is a low land area, where the reservoir from Moore State Park just to the west empties into a wetland basin. It is here in the autumn that I first look to see the colors change in the swamp maples and scrub oak that border the lower ground.

It is also here that I’ve seen the first signs of skunk cabbage poking up through any remnant ice or snow, greenish yellow shoots protruding upward with a slight unfurling that will become the spreading leaves. I understand the these shoots give off notable heat to aid melting any early spring snow and to hasten their rapid upward growth. This is why you often see just the shoot tips surrounded by ice in certain hollows in the wooded lowlands.

The flower that develops later is the reason for the name, for unlike the perfumes of so many spring and early summer blossoms, the skunk cabbage has a flower which is both unexceptional looking and malodorous, the latter all the better to attract early insect pollinators like flies to the smell of decay.

March 27

This morning at 5:00 am the full moon dominated the western horizon, only ten degrees or so above the tree line. The early spring full moons are often spectacular, when there is still snow cover on the ground and the air is yet humidity free. With warming temps, it is tolerable even at this hour to be outside to enjoy the pre-dawn splendor of the setting moon. Its light reflected to such a degree off the snow pack, that I could have easily read a book.

This is after all the worm moon, which is particularly ironic this year, as I am quite certain that the normally turning worms are feeling sluggish in the still frozen ground beneath the snow.

Typically, we’d recognize the reawakening of the Earth, in part by the turning of the soil done by the voracious worms within. Or, we would see them by the hundreds strewn about on our paved roads after an early spring deluge has flooded the ground.

No such rains this year. Not yet. Maybe next week. We celebrate the moon all the same.

March 26

A new visitor arrived today at the feeder. It had the look of a yellow finch that was beginning to develop its summer color, but the body shape and markings resembled more a nuthatch.

Sarah took down the bird book and started leafing through it for identification. No mistaking it, we had a Carolina Wren flitting between the feeder and the hanging suet cake. It was slightly larger than our resident house wrens, which should arrive within a month or so to take possession of their established boxes.

The wren stayed for several minutes, unperturbed by the activity of titmice, chick-a-dees, and finches. It suddenly took flight and landed on a lower branch of the big sugar maple near the house, used a small twig to clean its beak (much in the way a knife is sharpened), and then just departed on its way.

March 25

The forsythia in the kitchen windowsill has small greenish shoots that are emerging from the buds. These are the sepals that cover the developing yellow petals underneath. To pass by and glance, you wouldn’t notice a significant change from a week ago, but after a few days in the sunshine of the window, it is undeniable that the flowers are beginning to form.

The same is happening in the soil, still locked beneath the snow that is receding little by little with the warming temperature. Down below, life is beginning to stir and multiply. Worms will soon ascend from the lower soil to begin turning the humus, springtails and mites emerge from eggs, hungry for detritus to feed, and myriads of microorganisms - all part of the vast organic web of life that is within the soil, is capturing energy and cycling matter.

These things take time, and like the clippings on the windowsill, the changes are gradual yet building like a tide toward this thing we call spring.

March 24

The chipmunks have begun to emerge from their hibernation. I saw one today sitting on the stone wall by the garden shed just sunning itself near midday. In the summer, our yard and area around the barn has half a dozen of these “seven stripers,” as my father used to call them, and we become rather familiar with their various den hole locations. The majority of these are simply emergent holes from the ground, and so I now wonder if the chipmunks have been growing impatient, since the ground still has a half foot of dense snow nearly everywhere.

In a month or so, these little visitors will be scurrying about frenetically, mostly picking up bird seed until nature’s provender kicks in with the growth season. Now, I can’t help but chuckle to watch this singular newcomer, sitting quietly on the rock, gazing out at the white snow. I imagine that it is trying to determine if it woke too early.

March 23

The Catchfly (Sweet William) seeds germinated today, only two days after I planted them. And they emerged abundantly, as there are over a dozen tiny green seedlings in the cell. I am amazed at this really, that it would spring forth so readily and in such numbers and from what was such a tiny seed – no larger than the period at an end of a sentence, and strikingly coal black. It is a wonder that that such vitality emerges from what seems so opposite.

I read in the paper this morning that scientists are continuing to research the possibility of long-distance space travel, with the potential to colonize Mars or even beyond. Of course, this was the stuff of Buck Rogers years ago, but now it seems that technology has started to catch up with the once fantastical.

Of the rationales for pursuing this, a lesser one highlighted is that through colonization, humans will have a means to continue existing, in the event that we so devalue or deplete Earth’s habitable conditions. I am thinking about this as I look into my seedling cell, where a tiny and verdant green forest has sprung up from seemingly nothing.

The scientists also hope that long-distance travel may be feasible to exoplanets that have been identified, particularly those candidates from among the hundreds that have similar characteristics to Earth (distance from a star, certain spectral emissions, etc.) which would then favor habitable life. Perhaps even more, that life already exists in these distant islands in the void of space.

And there’s the connection. Out there, somewhere in the seeming inertness of space are assuredly seedlings. Given that humans are apparently destined to ruin those here on Earth, we are compelled to find more elsewhere.

March 22

The birds must be preparing for migration soon. Our juncos are at the ground below, hopping about in a frenzy trying to locate just the right seed to eat. You have to wonder about their efficiency, as they pick up several seeds and cast them away before selecting the one that is for reasons unknown, just right.

Presently there are a dozen in a rough six-foot circle around the feeder base. These are curious little birds, and I imagine them as a jittery meeting of small executioners who are deciding on some fate.

They will leave soon, as they migrate west to the Berkshire hills or north to the White Mountains where they summer in the forest country. Our chick-a-dees will soon do the same, making way for the arrival of our own habitual summer residents of whom we are fortunate to have.

March 21

I planted wildflower seeds indoors today, which  is a silly thing to do really, because no matter how prodigious they become, they will be long past transplanting when warm enough temperatures do arrive. I simply needed to do something to counteract this lingering winter, even if it is inconsequential.

I had collected various wildflower seeds last summer and fall, placing them in labeled small glass vials and stored on an old type face shelving on my bedroom wall. It was my intent at the time to plant them in the spring, outdoors when the ground had sufficiently thawed. But impatience has gotten the better of me, so I selected a few seeds from each of the 24 vials and planted them in small soil-filled cells placed within an incubator.

March 20

Evidence suggests that the ancients did not revere the equinox as they did the solstices of December and June. Admittedly, it is difficult to celebrate it much this year, beyond a simple acknowledgement that tomorrow the days will be ever so slightly longer than the nights.

It should be a time to appreciate our balance sheet, which has accumulated a surplus of evening darkness since last autumn, at the expense of our precious daylight. Tomorrow, as the Earth begins to incline gradually and increasingly toward directness with the sun’s rays, we should at least for a moment stop to savor this accomplishment.

I am telling myself this today, because it is snowing like a fury, which is an odd contrast to the weatherman’s proclamation that spring has officially begun. Amidst the stinging snow, I decided to go for a walk down Grove Street, following the hill downward to the bend in the road just past Robinson’s Greenhouse. At midday, not a soul was out on the road. It had the look and feel of a January day. Just 50 yards or so past the greenhouse, set within the woods on the west side of the road, a singular white pine stood out tall and straight against the backdrop of its deciduous neighbors.

I noticed this tree only because a lone cardinal was perched at it summit, calling its song over and over in what I could only characterize as jubilation. No matter the snow or wind or cold temperatures, “rejoice” seemed to call out this bird. Spring is upon us.

March 19

March winds are decidedly different than just two months ago. They are at once more gentle and yet strangely biting if the day is just so. The cold winds of January were thick with air, packed closely together so that each gust was an assault. Now, the air is tinged with a coming warmth, where the Aeolus breezes are less forceful, and we feel less need to lean into the wind figurative and literally.

These winds carry a humidity from places west and south, and though they blow with less apparent force, we are stung nonetheless by a fierce chill. This is all the more as March winds seem more constant, as if the gods were apt to stir the pot to shift from winter to spring.

Today is such a day, where the wind built quickly in the morning sun and blew steadily all day, coming down the sides of Wachusett Mountain, across the snow-laden fields, and to our doorstep.

It is not the March winds of my youth, all filled with images of flying kites and early spring flowers. This may be the case in the Midwest, but here we seem locked in the transition between winter and spring.

March 18

The forsythia is yellowing noticeably now, and it stands apart from the other shrubs that line the edge rows of the fields. A month ago, you wouldn’t give it much notice, but now it seems to glow with expectancy.

We have a large bush on the northeast corner of the house that has a will of its own, growing wild in all directions and with a virulence of a summer weed. Each fall, I cut it back with a vengeance, knowing full well that by next mid summer it will be reaching upward in all directions.

Sarah took a pair of garden pruners out today and cut a few clippings to bring inside. Set them in a vase on the windowsill and wait a couple of weeks and we will have an early taste of spring, golden yellow flowers that precede the coming of the green.

March 17

The killdeers have returned. We actually heard one last evening while hunting for the comet. Among the chorus of evening sounds, a modest prelude to what we will hear in a month or so after sunset, a lone killdeer trilled its insistent tee tee tee tee, over by the lower field that is still covered in snow.

I think of the killdeer as a comical bird of summer, walking briskly on two spindly legs among the raised beds of the planted fields, staying just ahead of the tractor or walker. It is a mystery why they prefer the open fields as nesting sites, where all manner of dangers are a possibility.

I imagine it is the males that have arrived, with the females soon to follow, waiting for the weather to warm and the fields to be turned so that they can commence in building their exposed rocky nest.

We will hear and see much more of them as the spring ensues.

March 16

After sunset last evening, we went to a high knoll on the north side of Anna Maria’s campus, just south of a break line of cherry trees that marks the edge of the farm. From here, it was possible to see the western horizon without being obstructed by tree line.

The waxing crescent was just a sliver, like the Cheshire Cat perhaps 15 degrees above the horizon, set in a twilight zone that went from pink below to deepening blue-black as the sky ascended. As we often get in the winter months, when the sky is free of clouds, it was crystal clear with no humidity.

We had hoped to catch a glimpse of the fading comet, supposedly just 10 degrees to the west of the crescent moon, though we were warned that it had receded far enough from Earth’s view to make it faint. So we waited and waited, scanning the sky with field glasses trying to discern the wispy tail set against the deepening black sky.

In the end, no such luck, yet the sky itself was resplendent with stars that seemed to awaken by the thousands. Jupiter shown brightly nearly overhead, and as we stood and watched the heavens, the bird song and breeze of the evening were around us.

March 15

Despite that the yard is still mostly covered with snow, there is a small patch on the western side in the front of the house that receives more sunlight throughout the day. Here the snow has given way, and we can just distinguish the matted Vinca minor within the patch, not four or five feet in diameter.

At the edge of the Vinca, just poking up maybe an inch at most are two daffodil meristem heads, pale yellow and snow weary, waiting for sunshine and warmth to spur them on ever upward and greener.

These are the first floral promises I’ve seen this year, and I am rejoicing inwardly. As the snow recedes, particularly around the knot garden in front, we may see the first tender shoots of crocuses and snowdrops soon.

March 14

Thinking more of cycles and seasons and timelines today, perhaps because we are in the midst of a change here from the winter that was to the spring that will be. The flitty bug that marked the change in one sense two days ago is long gone by now. Its short cycle is marked only within the day or two in which it lives. The comet is leaving our area, outward I suppose on its long journey to the reaches of the solar system, whereupon it will cycle its return Earthward again. I won’t be here when it arrives next, many years from now, lifetimes for me, but just a blink in the eye in the cosmic sense.

Our lives are measured by cycles, days that turn into months, seasons that become years. Spring affords us a sense of beginnings and of possibilities, where we see the progression of cycles on so many scales, played out in the span of days and weeks. Yesterday’s insect has gone to egg, maybe hatching anew in due time, and the spring comet will return again many springs from now.

March 13

A comet was supposedly visible for those of us in the northern hemisphere. According to the astronomers, we were to look low on the horizon just after sunset, and for a brief window of time, the comet would appear as a whitish streak in the twilight sky just near the point where the sun had set.

Seeing the horizon anywhere in Paxton is difficult enough, on account of the many hills and trees that encompass them. We planned ahead to drive to the top of Davis Hill Road, just ½ mile or so north of town, where I am certain that there is an unobstructed view to the southwestern horizon.

The sun was due to set at 6:30pm, so we started getting ready to go just about a quarter after 6, when Sarah noticed the large and dense bank of clouds moving in over the western sky.

After two days of crystal clear skies, both day and night, it seems out comet date will need to wait until it next returns.

March 12

I have seen forty seven Marches come and go. Those of my childhood are distant to me now, and my memories are sketchy at best. The months and seasons and years have stacked one on top of the other, and I am acutely aware today of such timelines or yardsticks in which we measure our lives.

While standing in the driveway this afternoon, simply listening to the birdsong and enjoying the full strength of the March sun on my face, I was surprised to see a small midge-like insect flit closely by my face. It was carried along in a gentle breeze, likely having come from the direction of the barn and headed westerly where the breeze seemed to take it.

The first insect of the year, not counting the emergent ladybugs we often get when the sunlight warms their hibernation space in a windowsill crack. No, this was an honest-to-goodness flitty bug, as we call them. An ephemeral, I suppose, meaning that today it will likely experience the entirety of its life, having emerged today from a chance egg, lain last fall on a twig that awaited just the right amount of warming sunshine.  Within today, this creature will emerge, grow, fly, attempt to find a mate, and ultimately die upon this Earth. No seasons or years that stack one after another. Just today.

As a boy growing up summers in Northern Michigan, we used to see the mayflies emerge upon the lake, often en masse, spending just a singular day or so in their adult winged form. I remember then, as I do now, how fragile life seems, how inconsequential, when the scales of time are but a blink to us.

March 11

It is warm enough today for me to sit outside on the porch, out of the wind and where my chair sits in the full sun. It is a glorious day, and it is reviving to feel the sunshine on my face and to listen to the birdsong.

I sit maybe 20 feet from our feeder, and after several minutes of my being here, the chick-a-dees show no hesitation at coming and going. The nuthatch is decidedly curious, remaining just beyond in the break line of the trees between the feeder and the access road. Less gregarious than the chick-a-dee, the nuthatch makes a slight humming call, not so much a social call, but rather a singular pip, I think inquiring of me and my purpose here.

The snow continues to melt off the roof in earnest, and the chorus of chirps and dripping sounds and the warmth of the sun against my skin make the storm of days ago seem in the past.

March 10

As I walked past the town fields this morning just after sunrise amid nearly perfect stillness, I heard the slow “whoosh whoosh” sound before I spotted it.

Coming in low and traveling east from the direction of Anna Maria, a long blue heron flew overhead heading toward somewhere unknown.

For just a moment, as I looked upward so that only sky and trees and the passing heron were in my vision, I could easily imagine some Jurassic scene, and the lone witness to this prehistoric bird silently, save for the “woosh” of its wings flying by.

The heron evokes this sense of ancient creature, with its habit of flight and occasional guttural squawk suggesting some pterodactyl in hunt.

I see the herons now and again in summer, usually wading near the sore of the pond, silently and patiently hunting for some small fish or errant crawfish. They are elegant in water, albeit somewhat unsettling, as they cautiously walk the shoreline, stepping with slow and deliberate intent, all the while looking with their penetrating gaze.

March 9

The storm of the past two days is now gone, and the skies shine clear, though the wind remains fierce.

Sitting in the sunroom watching the birds return to the feeders in earnest, the wind must be out of just the right direction, as the hurricane chime in the front keeps sounding.

It’s a fairly large triangular chime, that I fastened to the corner of the front barn. It’s weight is heavy enough so that only a fairly strong breeze out of the north will cause it to sound.

It is a deep and pleasing metallic chime, reminding me of the sound of the harbor channel markers that sit off Woods Hole in the Vineyard Sound. The intermittent “clang, clang” I am hearing just now is oddly out of place amidst the snowpack and winter scene. In my mind, I see seagulls hovering just above the boat, and warm water wind blowing spray from the tops of the crests, sounding the big red channel buoy as it pitches in the swells.

March 8

It snowed all night and several hours into today, with a driving wind out of the east that is typical of a nor’easter low that sits off the cape. I took a ruler out to the back, in a spot that isn’t subject to drifting too badly. Nineteen inches of new snow since yesterday afternoon and at least 6” more is forecast.

The drifts in our front dooryard are nearly four feet deep in spots, and the front entryway is completely blocked.

Just before bed last night, we checked the back porch to see if our surrogate new pet opossum had visited. She’s been regularly coming now for the past two weeks, foraging under the feeders for discarded sunflower seeds. Sure enough, she was sitting right on the porch, using her front paws and long snout to push aside the snow that accumulated around her, oblivious to our watching her from only a couple of feet away.

Where she goes during the day is only a guess, but we’ve seen tracks that seem to lead across the access road to the neighbor’s garden shed. And, when we first discovered her, the dogs gave chase while she ambled in that direction. (I kept hoping that she’d perform the coma-like seizure and drop dead, only to see what the dogs might do.) If she comes again tomorrow, JD wants to name her Pat.