Pardon the common grammar, but there’s a joy to the coming of spring that defies city-wise learnin’ and wants to make you rejoice like country tillers throughout time at the turning of the seasons.  Here we’ve had an early thaw and a few days of warmish weather that I know are mere teasers  But when you see the crows out celebrating the reappearance of grass and soil and ready to pick a fight with any raptor that might threaten its young in the nesting season soon to come, you can’t help that rush of expectancy.

Walking home last night, I could smell the soil for the first time since Thanksgiving, and I took my initial post-snow walk up through the old orchard with its flattened weeds punctuated with vole and mouse trails that just last week kept them safely under the snow and away from predatory eyes.  The hawks are perching low now, ready to take quick dives for meals that have been eluding them since the beginning of December.  One small flock of mallards was about—scouting for open water on lakes and ponds that had been sealed with ice thicker than it has been for years.  Even during the big chill a few weeks back, the migrating bufflehead ducks were already massing in the open water on or near Lake Michigan

Halfway home I broke a twig from a maple tree and found that indeed the sap is running.  Warming and lengthening days with more sunshine and cold nights combine to call the maple roots to action, bringing up the sugary water that will soon be dripping from spile to sap bucket all over the North Country.  Mid-February to mid-March is sugarbush time here—providing the rest of the country with “genuine maple syrup.”  After the cold comes roaring back in tonight, the end of the snapped twig may soon provide me with a sap-sickle for a mildly sweet lick or two for my homeward trudge.

In the orchard the over-wintering crabapples and haws (fruit of the hawthorn) are ready to provide nourishment for the migrating robin flocks that follow the thaw northward assuming that the snow is done and they can get on with worm collecting.  When they’re surprised by the late snow storms, they go for the fruit.  As the weather gets warmer, these fruits will soon ferment and drop in preparation for the new blossoms.  What is humorous is to see is cedar waxwings gorging on the fruit at the fermenting stage and flying drunk.  Unfortunately, they do at times fly into windows or fall off the trees in stupor, often bringing about their demise.

If you go here you can get a glimpse of the old orchard on Google Maps in the satellite view.  The first big white roof you see directly west of our condo is the RBC building.  The orchard, in between the condo and RBC, is indicated by the patchwork “dots” that mark the rows of apple trees that are quickly dying off from aging and lack of husbandry.

Remembering where we have lived, I know that in the South there will be camellia festivals and shows galore.  In Southern California, the hummingbirds will be returning and starting their feeder ownership battles.  And in coastal Northern California the winter rains will have put the rolling hills into their green phase—only to turn “gold” again in late May.  When we Michiganders lived in Marin County, we soon realized what good PR it was for the state to call their hills “golden.”  Because the grass and weeds in the east are green all summer long, we sort of chuckled when we realized that “golden” was a euphemism for “dead” grass and weeds caused by the annual cessation of rain by mid May.

Why don’t you register and/or log in and tell the rest of us what you look forward to when spring comes “where you’re at”?

See you outdoors!

Dean

Many of the photos on this site are from Creative Commons at Flickr.com and from Wikipedia.  If you right click with your mouse on these photos, you can see them in their full size.  My own pictures will come up in full size if you left click on them—like the zebras on February 8.  After you have looked at the photos, click the back arrow to get back to the site.

Some may not know that the highlighted words in post are also links.  If you left click on these words, you will be taken to a site that should define the terms or give you further information about them.  Again, to get back to the WOC site, click on the back arrow.  —DO