From this space in the year, you can travel to the whole range of early, middle and late spring.
For just a few days, all of those seasons lie out totally accessible to anyone who will go to see them.
If you travel to the Canadian border now, you will find the ice has broken up on the lakes. The first cottonwoods are budding there. The first crocus, the first daffodil and tulip foliage is pushing out of the ground. So far north, it is still the first weeks of earliest spring.
Gaining on spring at the rate of approximately one day for every thirty miles south, you will see the grass showing color and by Minneapolis, it's the first of April. A few daffodils are in bloom, forsythia is out and willows glow.
Through Pennsylvania, down to West Virginia, the tree line comes alive with golds and pale greens. Approaching the border states, the intensity of coloration grows with each mile, all the winter branches filling in.
Below the Ohio River, late May’s clover time comes into flower, first the white, then pink, then the tall sweet clovers into South Carolina. The canopy closes in and loses its early brilliance by the time you pass into southern Georgia. In Mobile, Alabama, the leaves are full size. Mulleins and thistles and lilies are open, and you know for sure you’ve seen all of spring, well a little bit of all of it.
This is Bill Felker with Poor. Will's Almanack. I'll be be back again next week with notes on time and the seasons. In the meantime, since time is a matter of space, let your mind or your wheels wander wherever you want to go.
