Spring has Sprung

Spring has Sprung

Spring has taken her rightful position as queen of the season only yesterday. Winter will tease spring several times during the next few weeks until the cold winds are blown out for another season.
Spring will not be deterred, thank the power that steers the universe. Whether is has been a cold, snowy winter, or a mild one, spring renews man's spirits, as it has for eons. Our ancestors surely crawled out of the caves, shed their animal skin coverings, and warmed themselves in the sun. The feeling is still the same.
Man sheds his heavy winter coats, gloves, and toboggans and sweatshirts, and greets the sun enthusiastically every year.
Man is still awed by the magic of seeds sprouting. It is still somewhat magical to ponder how sap at the roots of trees and shrubs knows when to begin its methodical movement upward toward leaf buds. Last weekend I pushed the leaves away from a portion of the lily bed, and surprised budding plants and myself. It is time that they were pushing through the earth, but finding them working, as they should be is always a pleasant early spring surprise. They have lay dormant for months, and now are working hard to put on an early
summer show that I wait for 11 months every year.
The early spring garden always brings my grandmother close to me again, as does the summer growing season. My fondest memories of her are in her kitchen creating delicacies for her family and preserving food for the worst of all winters to come. When she wasn't in the kitchen, she was in the garden prodding plants to produce for her kitchen. She knew flowers and vegetables like she knew her children and their children.
My grandmother had firm thoughts about daylight saving time. Her clock, the one that hung in the kitchen on the wall above her dough board table, always showed "God's time," and she didn't believe in setting it ahead or back.
The days are beginning to stretch in the morning and evening. Man earns his keep day to day, but those in tune with nature also live season to season. You sense the changing seasons most when you dig in the dirt.
Spending early years on a west Tennessee farm, tagging around after a German grandfather who spent his life farming, gave me a keen sense of what it meant to live season to season. The mind works with the season at hand, but ponders the season to follow.As I uncover plants beginning their spring growth cycle, my mind sees them in full bloom in early summer. It makes all the early spring gardening work well worth the aching back and sore muscles.
Regardless of how you feel about starlings being the one of the major pests of the western world, notice their brilliant yellow bills. They turn yellow as the breeding season approaches. The bill begins to change color at the base and the yellow spreads outward to the tip. The robin's bill is the same color in the springtime. It is signs of the season.
Purple martin houses need to be up and in place to receive the flocks coming in. Blue birds are already examining houses and choosing where they will nest this year. If you are putting up new houses, don't be discouraged if bluebirds decided to not nest in them this year. Sometimes it takes a season of looking,
examining, and then accepting them by the birds. All birdhouses should be cleaned and ready for use by the
time spring arrives.
In nature, spring is the season of reproduction. Wild turkeys are courting and will establish continue to gobble through April. Male red-winged blackbirds are arriving and setting up territories around area ponds. Mourning doves are beginning to pair and coo. Some doves will raise as many as five pairs of
offspring before next fall. The female lays only two eggs, and then begins to incubate them. Squirrels are already busy having their first babies of the year. Songbirds are singing and calling for mates. Nature has risen from the depths of darkness and cold again.
May you always hear the whisper of wings.
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P.O. Box 155
Black Mountain, North Carolina, USA 28711
A non-profit 501-3-C organization dedicated to wildlife research and education