Back to Phenology

[pameladean]

I've written a lot of LJ entries in my head during the past few weeks. Their subject lines have included "Maple Flowers," "Chickadees," "The First Bat of Spring," "Bluejays, " "Flicker!" and "Motherwort, the prickly motherwort, will cover us all." You can imagine the kind of thing.

My first sign of spring this year was at twilight on that anomalously warm day a little before the last snowstorm. I opened my bedroom window and heard a robin singing, that immediately recognizable twilight song that brought back memories almost as powerfully as a scent might, all the cool spring evenings and the hot summer twilights and the last warm sunsets of fall. The second sign of spring was that the maple trees were blooming. I saw a white squirrel eating a series of fallen blossoms out of a lawn in my neighborhood. The third sign was that the motherwort came up. I should have dug it all up right then. I would still have had motherwort if I had done that, but perhaps in manageable quantities.

The next sign was chionodoxa and scilla blooming on south-facing slopes, and then suddenly there were scilla leaves in my yard, and then more suddenly they had buds with color, and now they are blooming. Just in the last two days, all over the bare mossy ground in the shady patches of our yard, the violet leaves are up, still half-curled. The wild geranium has come up among the motherwort, distinguishable by its smoother and sometimes spotty leaves. Lilies of the valley are already pushing their flower stalks up on the south side of the house, though on the north side there are not even any spears yet.. The two earliest patches of tulips have buds, though no color. In the meantime the winter aconite has just barely decided to emerge. One peony of five, snow-on-the-mountain, the first tiny leaves on mock orange and lilac bushes. And the elms are budding as red as red can be. I saw a sad sight from the bus window: a gigantic elm, in full red bud, hacked into pieces, frail upper branches still waving, lying in the mud, like a piece of Orthanc transplanted to Minneapolis. It had the orange markings of doom that indicate Dutch elm disease.

This evening there were three bats in the front yard. The first bat of spring was a businesslike bat, but these bats seemed positively giddy.

P.

Comments

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

once i am in my house, would it be possible for you to come over and tell me what i should do about the yard? there's a garden, there's bushes, and they will want taking care of.

[pameladean]

Sure, I'd really enjoy that, though you may want somebody more expert as well. I enjoy my yard more than I can say, but I am not completely knowledgeable. I have lots of books, though. It'd be a start, for sure.

P.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

I saw a sad sight from the bus window: a gigantic elm, in full red bud, hacked into pieces, frail upper branches still waving, lying in the mud, like a piece of Orthanc transplanted to Minneapolis. It had the orange markings of doom that indicate Dutch elm disease.

It is to weep. We contribute to the expense of maintaining the adult American Elm in the churchyard across the street, annual injections of some kind of drug that keeps Dutch Elm disease at bay. There are so few left.

Orthanc indeed.

[pameladean]

It's giving me horrible flashbacks to the 1970's when all of a sudden all the great elms were dying.

I thought we were past that.

Minneapolis vaccinates especially valuable trees, and so do other organizations, but we don't get them all.

P.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

That drug was developed by a team that included my friend Jeni Embrey, who is herself now dead. Living elm trees all over the world may not know her name, but their leaves whisper about her.

[pameladean]

Oh, goodness. I'm so sorry you lost her.

I'll think of her now whenever I see an elm tree.

P.

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

"The first bat of spring was a businesslike bat..." -- that should be the first line of a story. Probably not one by you.

[sdn.livejournal.com]

"hello, i am the first bat of spring. do i have a deal for you!"

[pameladean]

"Put up a bat house and I'll keep your yard mosquito-free!"

P.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I love, love, love reading these garden postings, and trying to imagine what some of the more exotic entries look like. (I end up settling for glorious colors and shapes.)

[pameladean]

I can't really gauge what would be exotic to you. I do have a digital camera, and I should really do some photographs. On the other hand, my whole yard undoubtedly sounds about a hundred times better in writing than it would look in photos. I should do an anti-romantic post about the trash that blows into the yard, and the raccoon droppings, and the untidy brush piles left over from the house painting.

P.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Almost everything you name is exotic--many of the names recognizable from gardens in English kidzbooks, though never seen (or not recognized, during glimpses when I traveled back East to Minnesota and points beyond) but I retain bright images of profusions of flowers, and just reading the names will bring up various inward images, whether they match the names or not.

[inlaterdays.livejournal.com]

i love the way violet leaves unfurl :)

my double primroses are in bud. i love spring...

[pameladean]

It's all your fault that I have snowdrops, and now you are trying to addict me to primroses.

P.

[inlaterdays.livejournal.com]

hooray! i mean, "i'm sorry." :)

rice creek gardens has a good selection...

*tempt*

[markgritter.livejournal.com]

The first thing I noticed was the chives sprouting again. Then some of the front bushes started to bud.

Today when I wandered around the yard, I could see the buds of the hostas poking out of the ground, which is neat. There are also some weeds in the front planters already, and two of the same volunteer I saw last year! It must be a perennial or something with hardy seeds, because although I left it be, it didn't grow a flower or really anything but a leaf sticking out of the ground.

Unfortunately the garlic mustard underneath the trees in back is already sprouting up enthusastically.

[pameladean]

A leaf sticking out of the ground sounds like a somewhat unhappy (planted too deep, not fed what it wants, gnawed by mice, whatever) bulb of some sort.

My chives are up too, but they pretend to be grass until I step on them and smell the result and think, Oh, yes, chives! They have spread a lot, which is good.

P.

[homemakerj.livejournal.com]

In spring, my eyes long for the tulips. I completely forget about the chionodoxa and scilla. Which is why I'm so surprised when I see the blankets of blue and white. Such pretty little things.

[pameladean]

Yes, those two plants are really unsurpassed at blanketing otherwise uninteresting stretches of earth where grass isn't very interested in growing and the periwinkle hasn't woken up yet.

P.

[loligo.livejournal.com]

I miss spring fever. It's nice to live someplace with milder winters (grew up in Michigan, now live in far southern Illinois), but spring packs no punch here. Robins? They kind of wander away in December, mostly, and wander back in February. You don't even notice they're gone. And we never get that spring smell -- melting snow and muddy earth and sudden burst of green. (OTOH, the early daffodils are already finished and the later varieties are winding down. My peony has flower buds larger than peas already, though still not to marble size yet.)

[asimovberlioz.livejournal.com]

About thirty years ago when I was a houseguest of markiv1111 and his first wife, a bat got into the house. That in itself wasn't so bad, but one of the cats was discovered playing with it, so it was deemed necessary to catch the bat in order to have it tested for rabies. Frenzy ensued.

Bat was caught, cat was fine.

[pameladean]

Bats in the house would be a problem. I am grateful that we don't have it. Bats in the yard, however, are a blessing.

P.