The Colors of Spring

We had a hot week. Unseasonably warm. Temps were up into the low 80’s. We have entered into spring – full blast. The peepers are back. The bullfrogs are bellowing, the males outdoing each other with their deep sounds, thumbing like the strings of a bass. Now it is hard to remember winter’s quiet.
I have been following the progress of the winter plants. I should learn their names. They light up the brooks, the colors now otherwise dull with the browns and grays of dead leaves exposed now that the snow has all melted.
These past couple of days the temperatures are more seasonably spring…next week heavy rains are forecast.

Happy Earth Day!

The thick snow pack we had just a few short weeks ago has diminished to small patches here and there in the shadows just inches thick. We have blossomed from winter directly into summer and have shed our hats and coats. It’s as if we have awakened from a dream and have plunged suddenly into mid-daylight. Now I have a greater appreciation for how fast glacial ice can melt as the earth warms.
Happy Earth Day!

Spring at last!

We were gone from Beatitude Pond for four days at a conference and returned to find more snow gone, more green things poking up from the crusty cold earth. The ducks are now regular visitors to the pond. The Phoebes are back, scoping out the ground for stray seeds.
I can work the garden and was able to plant the bare root of the blueberry bush that arrived in the mail last week in a long box. We are back in business and I expect the peepers and bullfrogs will resume their rhythm and song in the coming week or so.
On the exposed grass we can now see things we had forgotten about low these six months while everything was under a foot of snow.

Emergence

The snowpack has diminished more! By Shedd Brook, I discovered some river plants poking up through the cold soil. Tough plants. The snow is still a foot high, inches away. I can dream now of emerald green.

Over in the wetlands as my boots sank through the snow to water below, I surprised a Mallard duck...the same fellow from last year? he flew in a small then wider circle furiously before disappearing over a hill of trees.