May 14

There was a steady rain last night that must have ended just before dawn for there was a small stream of run off that followed the roadside past our driveway and down the street. The morning sky was clearing, and in the sunrise small drops of water on all the new leaves glistened with thousands of tiny refracted rainbows of color.

Small puddles in the street and in the depressions of our driveway revealed what we knew these past several days had been swirling around us. The pollen had been washed out of the air and now lay in the edges of these small puddles like detritus of yellow washed ashore after a storm. This looks like the yellowing pollen of the maples and even the spruce across the road, though it seems early for the latter to release.

After so many days of needing rain, the Earth will assuredly explode in green growth with this moisture, and the air is tinged with the verdant smell of soil and life.

In the afternoon, we took the dogs for a walk down past Robinson’s just to the point where Grove turns into Pond Street. I had wanted to see if the coltsfoot had yet gone to seed for my collection (and it had), plus we wanted to see the water level in the small vernal pool that sits just off the road before the bend (it is a favorite spot to hear the peepers and wood frogs, who call incessantly until you approach near enough in passing, and then they go silent).

On our way back up the hill, just before Robinson’s  and tucked into the woods on the north side of the road, I spotted a small patch of starflower in bloom, with its delicate seven white petals sitting atop a thread-like stalk. This patch of perhaps a dozen plants, spread out over twenty square feet, sat in the shade of several large pines, in the cool and damp part of the woods that will soon give way to the successional oncoming of the ferns.

Notes:

Starflower in bloom.

Shepherd’s Purse in bloom in field.