Spring

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April Is Nature’s Poem

(While spring comes to some places in March, the season is still in its infancy in these parts through all of April. This is my mountainside take on the month everyone surely loves.)

April is a yellow month.
Daffodils, forsythia, and dandelions
(whose future fluffy puffs
delight children everywhere)
dot the landscape.

April is blue, purple, and pink
with wild violets, phlox, and periwinkle
blooming side by side with
hyacinths, tulips, lilacs,
flowering crabapples.

April is green
as spring’s bright tastes
emerge from the earth:
asparagus and rhubarb
along with creasies,
garlic mustard, and folkloric ramps.

April is white—
fabled dogwood shares mountainsides
with legendary serviceberry,
its delicate blooms drifting down 
like flakes of an unexpected spring snow.

April is the month of awakening,
its arrival heralded by
blackbirds red of wing,
bluebirds of the bluest blue,
and the iridescent greens and dazzling
ruby throats of hummingbirds.

April is for spring cleaning.
Time to rid closets and minds
of winter’s cobwebs;
bodies, too, with tonics
of ancient lore:
sassafras, poke, purslane, and more.

Gardeners beware:
April (weather) makes fools of us all
with its first tentative beckoning of spring 
and irrepressible last days when
forest fairies frolic with dancing buds
of bloodroot, trillium, and mayapple—
all interrupted by surprise frosts and snows.

Blossoms and fragrant breezes
awaken us from winter slumber
with April’s ebullient energy
and its whispered promise
of a best yet to come.

Where would we be
without the gentle poetry of Nature
that is April?
A friend says dandelions look like bright yellow buttons in the landscape. Dandelion wine, anyone?

There’s nothing quite like a field of smiling daffodils.

Spring magnolia flowers bring a touch of pink to April.
Sweet violets symbolize faithfulness, honesty, and remembrance. They also make a lovely translucent jelly, or dress up a salad with the pretty petals.

Traditionally, serviceberry blooms mean the snow has melted so circuit-riding preachers can make the rounds for services, including weddings and buryings.

Buttercups represent joy, youth, and friendship. But don’t eat them–unlike dandelions, magnolias, and violets, these bright flowers are poisonous.
Along with rhubarb, asparagus is one of the garden’s earliest vegetables. They are the true taste of spring.
Five-petaled phlox makes a fragrant spring bouquet.

The hills are alive–with tasty ramps, the theme of many a flavorful spring festival. This wild onion with a garlicky flavor has been threatened by overharvesting. But fear not–you can safely forage this tasty treat by cutting the leaves rather than digging up the entire plant. They are just as delicious without being overpowering. Be sure to cut sustainably–only 20% of a cluster. As you can see, if you’re lucky enough to come across a patch, you can easily harvest a bagful while leaving most of these slow-growing perennials to continue producing. They are scrumptious sautéed in a little butter.

Small mounds of delicate bluets with their tiny yellow eyes (unfortunately not visible here) dot many a lawn and field in these parts. Such a welcome sign of spring!
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On the Edge

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This is the season of endings and beginnings. Where I live we are only now seeing spring come into its fullness with all its attendant hope and promise. Our current spring followed a particularly hard winter, both in real and metaphorical terms, so the season of rebirth is particularly welcome this year. The calendar may tell us summer begins in a few days, but I intend to savor spring as long as I can.

The spring of 2021 brought a number of graduations to our family. After more than a year of almost zero in-person events, I count myself lucky to have been able to attend one of these ceremonies—a high school graduation. Somehow, high school graduations seem a little more exhilarating than the same event following a college career. Perhaps it is because these seventeen and eighteen year olds find themselves on one of life’s particularly sharp edges. Whatever futures await them, their lives are about to change in some very big ways.

Until now, most of them—though certainly not all—have lived under the protective wings of family. The clothes they wear, the roofs they sleep under, the food they eat have been the worries of others. When the car broke down, when they were upset about something a teacher said or a classmate did, or when they hit upon a problem they didn’t know how to solve they knew help was in the next room or a mere phone call away. Their tomorrows will be different and they can feel it, but they understand they can’t really comprehend what that’s going to mean.

They are on the edge. On the edge that separates childhood and adulthood. Maybe that’s why their joy in this moment seems particularly honest and pure. The heavy stuff comes tomorrow or the next day or next month. Today they feel only relief and pride at having reached their biggest-yet milestone as they smile and laugh and hug and mug like the children to whom they are saying good-bye.

After the festivities of last week were over and hundreds of snapshots were taken, the remainder of our graduate’s evening was celebrated with family. The next day was reserved for friends. One after another hosted get-togethers, whether a day on the lake or a cookout complete with toasted marshmallows. We got to participate in one of those, too.

It started out as a family party, but quickly expanded to include now-former classmates. They were the stars; family members became spectators. That was fine by me because, except for the laughter of babies, almost nothing can rival the unadulterated exuberance of teenagers enjoying each others’ company. I eavesdropped unabashedly on their giggles as they reminisced about moments passed, shared favorite television and online programs and episodes, laughed at every scene in the movie they were watching as they munched on chips, gummy worms, and M&Ms. Their already high spirits rose with every chuckle.

Edges can be scary. But they amplify what is joyous. I hope all this year’s graduates and everyone who is sitting on an edge feels the same kind of elation I was part of a few days ago. As the salutatorian at our stadium-filled celebration ended her address to her classmates, “Peace out, Shawties.”

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The Month of Yellow

April is the month of yellow around these parts.

The daffodils finally burst into bloom last week and dandelions along with them. Country roadsides have exploded into an earthly vision of sunshine with forsythia. The shrubs are packed so tightly together, their branches so thick and intertwined, that even the cleverest rabbit would have a hard time navigating them.

And since yesterday, the goldfinches, those canaries of the wild, have overtaken our bird feeders (at least when they can wrest a few perches from the squirrels). At this very moment, I look outside to see half a dozen of the lemony-yellow birds crowded on the feeder outside the living room window, with more waiting in the wings—flitting in the rhododendron, sitting on branches of the nearby mountain ash, even perching on the windowsill.

Everything about goldfinches is showy—bright yellow feathers glowing next to raven-colored wings, sweet soprano chirps filling the air, bouncing flight patterns giddily announcing, “We’re back!”

Ten days ago, the day heralding April, we watched snow falling outside the very window where the finches now gather. Exactly six months ago, the colors were inverted. At ground level, nature was browning. The color was in the trees-—the rich, muted reds and bronzes of fall. Today, our trees are still bare. To see most of today’s colors requires looking down instead of up, down towards the earth from which they are being birthed.

April yellows are the yellowest yellows. Like spring itself, the yellow of daffodils, dandelions, forsythia, and goldfinches is a symbol of happiness, hope, energy, our very life force.

April is a good time to be alive.

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Spring Has Sprung!

In this yet another crazy weather year, the entire month of February was one cruel joke: such sunny, springlike weather that some of the wildflowers began to bloom. It gave us a too-early taste of the beauty and hope of spring. And then, winter returned—with a vengeance. It must have decided it liked it here because it stayed and stayed. Those heavy winter coats we wanted to put away back in February were called into frequent action all through April.

I wondered if spring would ever come. Seriously, I began to have my doubts. Back in April, my Facebook memories taunted me. There I was with a healthy handful of asparagus in early April a few years ago. This year, though, not the tiniest hint of an asparagus spear more than a full month later. Next, a three-year-old memory popped up showing our big rhododendron bursting with beautiful clusters of pink. That was a few weeks ago. Meanwhile, our rhodie remained bereft of color.

Finally, of course, spring did decide to emerge, and when it did it came on like a house afire. Pretty, white trillium flowers began dotting our forest landscape. One day the ground broke in a couple of spots in our asparagus bed. The next, we were deluged with asparagus. (I am not complaining.) We hadn’t been able to get our early crops planted as early as usual this year. It was either too cold or too wet. When we did have a decent break in the weather, our schedules demanded something else of our time.

Now we’re making up for it. We took to the garden on the first clear day of May. We may have gotten a little ahead of ourselves—our last average frost date is May 25th, but the long-range forecasts look so hopeful we’re taking a chance. We’ve forced ourselves to hold off on the things that demand more heat, but we couldn’t wait to get most everything else in the ground, even those seeds that say not to plant until there’s no more danger of frost. At this point, I’m okay with replanting if some of our seedlings get zapped by a late frost. It just felt too good to get out there and get dirt under my fingernails.

So far, we’ve planted onions, spinach, radishes, carrots, parsnips, rutabaga, kohlrabi, cucamelon, shelling and snow peas, runner beans, potatoes (purple and yellow), yellow squash, zucchini, lots of herbs, cabbage, broccoli, eggplant, beets, and more, as well as new raspberries, blueberries, and blackberries. Still to come: Christmas limas, scarlet runners, tomatoes, green beans, okra, and cukes.

Here are a few photos of long-awaited growing things—both wild and from the garden.

We’re eating asparagus everything these days!

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Lots of strawberry blossoms—yum!

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The peas are up.

So are our salad greens—already they need thinning. Fine by me.

We’re giving Jerusalem artichokes a try this year, safe and secure in their own little bed so they don’t take over the whole garden.

Garlic is so special—plant it in the fall and forget it. It’s the first thing to appear in spring.

Bright Lights chard with stems in beautiful rainbow hues, interplanted with marigolds for even more color

Wild mustard–leaves and flowers are edible.
Star chickweed with purple violet. Both are edible. We also have yellow and white violets.

Edible wildflowers–what a gift! Violets (sugared, for jelly, or in salads); wild mustard flowers and leaves add color and tang to salads; star chickweed is another salad option; mayflowers grow a sort of apple-like fruit that can be used in pies—assuming you can get to them before the deer. We never have.

 

Trillium—they have three of everything, it seems. And they’re all over the place right now.

 

Showy columbine

 

 

 

 

Signs of Spring
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Signs of Spring

In these parts, it’s a sure sign of spring when the white, pink-tinged flowers of the native serviceberry trees come into bloom. Those delicate blossoms burst open in our corner of the world a couple of weeks ago. Everywhere. All at once.

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Almost as dainty as snowflakes

So even though almost everything else is bare and we were immediately plunged into yet another cold snap (so often our mountain springtime fate), it’s comforting that the serviceberry knows spring is here.

See how bare all the other trees are?

There are more than two dozen species of the serviceberry tree. Most all are native to the U. S., and they grow in practically every state. Depending on where you live, you may know them by another name. Maybe shadbush, juneberry, shadblow, or their Native American name, saskatoon. In the east, it’s just plain serviceberry, or sarvisberry in our southern mountain dialect.

There are lots of stories about how the serviceberry came by its name. The one I’m particularly fond of says that back in the day, the tree came into flower just as the roads in the Appalachian mountains became passable enough that a circuit-riding preacher could finally travel this way again to hold service—or sarvis. Time for marrying and burying to resume. That explanation may be a bit fanciful, but isn’t it a lovely notion?

There’s more to the serviceberry than its early blooms or the tales associated with it. A member of the rose family, the serviceberry is a good landscaping choice with its pretty spring flowers and its striking fall foliage. In the summer, the tree bears berries that turn from red to purplish-blue as summer wears on. Bird love them. So do humans who’ve had the good fortune to discover them (and the good luck to beat the birds to them). The ripe berries both look and taste a lot like blueberries and are eaten raw or used for jelly- and pie-making. They can be added to breads, dried like raisins, or turned into juice or syrup. Like blueberries, they’re also highly nutritious.

Most of the serviceberries around here are natives, twenty to sixty feet tall. With their upward-stretching limbs, it’s hard to get at those berries. But you can purchase shrub-sized ones, which makes berry collecting ever so much easier. We have a young serviceberry down our road (courtesy of the birds, no doubt), so we’ve been able to sample some berries. Delicious!

If you see a serviceberry in bloom, make a note of it. Then check back in July or so for some tasty—and free—eating. You won’t be sorry.