The grass is ready to mow most years in the second week of Middle Spring. The shaggy grass reveals that parsnips are coming into bloom and that white tailed deer are growing their new antlers. Long grass says that all the garden weeds are sprouting.
And tulips bloom this week of the year throughout the East and Midwest.
The great annual dandelion flowering begins in lawns and freeway rest areas this week. Then morel mushrooms appear deep in the woods, the earliest spring wildflowers are at their best, May apples are shiny and tall, and giant leaves reach out from the wetland skunk cabbage.
Patches of wild geranium glow with an orange tint in the sun. Stalks are forming on the sweet rockets. Cowslip is just opening in the wetlands. Peach trees are in bloom, along with forsythia, pears, quince, magnolias, crab apples and cherries. In many years, daffodils hold from March. Buds on grape vines are flushed and swollen. Privets are filling out. Branches of multiflora roses are almost completely covered with foliage. Along lakes and rivers, pale spikes of lizard's tail are as long as dragonflies. Asparagus is tall enough for supper. American toads are chanting, and tadpoles swim the backwaters.
This is Bill Felker with Poor Will’s Almanack. I’ll be back again next week with notes for the fourth week of Middle Spring. In the meantime, look for the great patches of dandelions, a major signpost of the path to summer.
