It has been an almost perfect spring in Michigan this year—perfect for farmers.  The warm-up has been very slow, which is good especially for fruit growers who are concerned that we not have blossoms unfurling  too early: blooming before the pollinators are fully on the job, or blooming before several hard frosts do a number on both the blossoms and the pollinators.  A few years back our northwest coastal cherry growers lost over half their crop because of a late March warm spell.

But the chilly and wet spring has not been enjoyable for play outdoors.  And when you are a grandparent of six grandkids with serious cases of cabin fever, you want it to be warm and dry on the first day of spring—and stay that way.  If I had my druthers, it could be sunny and sixty-six every day from March to July.  But, for some reason, the Creator seems to know better what provides the best benefit for the most people.  So He has given us a perfect spring—which eventually included some wonderful mild weather leading up to this weekend and our first series of warm thunderstorms.  (If I had “the call,” I would be a storm chaser.)

As always, these weather factors have given the woods another change of floor covering: Fall provided a shaggy rug of brilliant, newly fallen leaves, which did not last long before it was replaced by  the plush white carpet of winter.  After the snow the rain-glossed linoleum of flattened coffee-hued leaves turned the wooded landscape into that dull duotone of dark gray and browns that screamed for color.

Now, PTL, the color has arrived: big green patches of wild leeks, the darker blotchy greens of the trout lily plant thrusting up polka dots of yellow blooms that contrast nicely with the whites of bloodroot and wood anemone.  Creamy squirrel corn blossoms rise above their own frilly green carpet.  And above it all, the birds are all lark-happy with the return of bugs and worms and the easy-to-grab nesting material.

Heightening my enjoyment of such days are evening hours reading another of my great used-book discoveries:  Scratching The Woodchuck: Nature on an Amish Farm by David Kline.  Here is a snippet for you to enjoy:

Last year I was by myself [in Christmas Hollow] when I found the hepaticas, and since it was the middle of May, the trees were in leaf, the woods were ringing with bird song, and the flowers were white trilliums, rue anemones, downy phlox, and jack-in-the-pulpits.  Everything about the place—its seclusion, its life, its beauty—had the aura of hallowed ground.  As a friend calls these special wild places: it was a small honey spot.  The wind in the trees and the water flowing over the shale-bottomed creek seemed to whisper, “Do not come closer. Take off our gumboots, because you are standing on holy ground.”  So I did.  Our return this spring, and the sight of the hepaticas in bloom, reaffirmed my belief that many of us need wild, unspoiled places where we feel close to God.  Places that are becoming scarcer and scarcer.

As Aldo Leopold wrote, “There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot.”  I am one of those who would have a hard time doing without wild things and wild places.  In so stating, I think I speak for all those botanizers, aged ten to eighty, who walked down that hollow to look at the lovely hepaticas in the renewal and rebirth of spring.

Do you have your special spring spot?  If you do, feel free to tell us about it in the comment pages.  If you don’t, make yourself a sabbath and start exploring for one.

See you outdoors!

Dean
(Assisted with my photos by Elle Ohlman, 6)