When one thing happens, something else is always happening, too. The flowering of snowdrops and early crocus and aconites bears witness to the blossoming of silver maples and the red maples along city streets, the blooming of weedy henbit in the garden, the increasing flow of maple sap, the full emergence of pussy willows, the appearance of honeybees and carpenter bees in search of the new pollen, the full bloom of snow trillium along the rivers, the final bloom of skunk cabbage in the wetlands, the time for killdeer and woodcocks and red-winged blackbirds to arrive from the South.
Clover grows back in the pastures. The tops of nettles are big enough for supper greens. Honeysuckle leaves unravel on the branches closest to the ground. Buds lengthen and start to unravel on multiflora roses, mock orange, and lilac. Bleeding heart foliage pushes up from the mulch, moss brightens dead logs, and daylily leaves are as tall as crows.
Fat, wet nightcrawlers slide up out the ground to breed under the warming mulch.
And from now on, average temperatures rise at their spring and early summer rate, one degree every three days, until the second week of June.
This is Bill Felker with Poor Will’s Almanack. I’ll be back next week with notes for the third week of early spring, the third week of the Flowering Moss Moon and the second week of the sun in Pisces. In the meantime, look for the earliest flowers and birds and bees.
