Spring is tentative about coming because the nights have been cold. We had snow last Friday and Saturday! But Spring will only be held back for so long. This week the flowers of the trees are coming out - red for the maples, yellow-green for the poplars, tan for the alder catkins. The skunk cabbage has unfurled from its sheath of pale green splashed with maroon to large heart-shaped leaves that fill the swampy places. Coltsfoot is up smiling yellow and shyly from the side of the trail. Bloodroot's fragile white petals are fearless coming through the dead leaves. Early wildflowers are trying to send up tiny tender leaves - trout lilies, starflower - just promising to burst forth in a week or so. The blessing of this time is time to amble and look - really look at the small things like new shoots.
What are you seeing as you take time this Spring?
(image credit: Wikipedia)
Symplocarpus foetidus - Wikipedia

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
Snow...  I love the snow! This love was rekindled on Tuesday evening when I took a walk in the park. It was dusk, the snow was falling gently and gathering on the pine trees. The lake had a thin coat of ice and snowflakes made it white. Snow is so amazing. It is hard to imagine that each flake is unique!  I looked up snowflake on wiki and found: A  snowflake  is a single  ice crystal  that has achieved a sufficient size and may have amalgamated with others, then falls through the  Earth's atmosphere  as  snow .  Each flake nucleates around a dust particle in  supersaturated  air masses by attracting  supercooled  cloud water droplets, which  freeze  and accrete in crystal form. Complex shapes  emerge  as the flake moves through differing temperature and humidity zones in the atmosphere, such that individual snowflakes differ in detail from one another... It always fascinates me to look up the ...
Read more
Image
 The other day I went to Five Rivers to do a Raptor count. Before the count started I had time for a walk around the Beaver Tree Trail. The pond was still frozen - the ice looked brindled in jade and black swirls. On the opposite side of the pond, the ice was white. I know I have read explanations of what makes the ice different colors, but right now it was enough to enjoy the creativity of colors moving in elegant frozen waves. Icicles hung from the spillway. Reaching down into the water flowing beneath them. The last vestiges of winter.  Rushes were bent and broken by winter winds, snow, and ice. Soon, new growth would replace them. The earth was brown with ozzy mud. The kind that is just as slippery as ice. Hopeful trees were budded crimson against the sky. Willows flushed orange, so stark and striking. The sky was layered in soft blues, white and grey.  Dampness seeped from the ground and folded around me. The Raptor count  is a DEC project which counts the rapto...
Read more
Last week I took a walk on the bike path along the Mohawk River. I tried to pay attention to the changes in the river since the weather turned cooler. First of all, the invasive water chestnuts that had chocked the shore were gone and the water ran freely. The reeds and the cattails were turning brown and struggling to stay upright in the Autumn wind. The geese were gathering close to shore; mallards too. An ice coating formed on the water. It was thin and subtle, but it foretold the coming of the winter. The water of the Mohawk would be stilled by the ice, resting from its labors. I love to watch the freeze-up process -  some years huge chunks of ice cover the river.  Paying attention was the gift of the day. The river was speaking of this transition to winter; it told many tales. I love this river that braids through Schenectady. It has its story and mine is included with it.  Tenonanatche is its native Mohawk name - "a river flowing through a mountain". Native names a...
Read more