I have been walking a lot at Sheri Capehart Nature Preserve lately, and maybe it is still winter, but everything that is alive seems to know that it is spring. Some count the beginning of spring according to months, starting with March. Others mark the start of spring when the length of days and nights becomes equal (the “vernal equinox,” March 19^th). For wild things that grow and breathe, spring is about temperatures and the length of daylight, and it is also about everything else around them. Spring is a team effort, so that new plant growth and flowering, the awakening of insects, the migration of birds, and lots of other things need to happen together for everything to work right. 

In the middle of the day on February 20^th at the preserve, it was 81.1F in the shade, and insects were on the move, including grasshoppers, wasps, and butterflies. As I walked down the trail, a small sulphur butterfly flew ahead of me to a new place to land among the emerging green plants. It found another sulphur and together they rose, circling each other, and flew away above the treetops. Along the boulder trail I could see six or eight of them at any one time. One would encounter another and they would briefly chase each other in a twirling pattern before separating. 

On the 26^th at midday it was 92.8F in the shade near the north pond, and I heard a few cricket frogs calling for the first time in months. Turtles basked in the sun. High above me, altocumulus clouds were arranged like balls of cotton in a patch of sky. Birds called from nearby trees – Carolina wrens, northern cardinals, Carolina chickadees, and a white-throated sparrow. Further along the trail was a spot with scattered white flowers of crowpoison and the yellow blooms of a plant called golden corydalis. Sometimes people call it “scrambled eggs.” 

And then March arrived, and suddenly the plum trees were covered in clusters of white flowers. From a distance, other tree branches mostly looked gray and bare, but here and there you could see a slight green haze of budding leaves. Elbowbush was flowering. On the way to the north pond, when I looked closely I could see that most of the trees and shrubs were budding. 

On March the 2^nd according to the calendar it could barely be spring, could it? I sat in my back yard and made a few notes:

Here in this false spring, the tree blossoms are bright white. The winter sun, still low in the sky, makes the day look like perpetual morning. The sun-warmed air moves and is a soft breeze against the skin. It is the morning of the year, the beginning. The flowers and bees know it, and the birds announce it in the trees. What does the chickadee and the cardinal know that the calendar does not?

I sit and look at the sky, the blue canvas where wind, sun, and water scribble and paint. There are dabs, streaks, and lines, white images and symbols in a language familiar but still a bit mysterious. Thin brush strokes make a big heart with a few lines of text, maybe wishing us peace and well being. And then the wind moves it to the east and the canvas is cleared.

In my yard, when I looked down, I found a forest of little blue flowers among leaves of various shapes. In the midst of this two- to four-inch “forest,” the yellow sun of a dandelion shone. A honeybee visited the flower; dandelions are among the first flowers to feed the hive.

The ground was filled with such a beautiful jumble of green shapes. There were bigger, taller ones with leaves like umbrellas with notches and fingers. The appeared to be clusters of about four frilly leaves right at the top of the stem. There was chickweed with long, branching stems and arrow-shaped leaves. Nearby were plants with delicate stems with leaflets off to each side, in the way we think of ferns. 

Scattered among these was bird’s eye speedwell, a beautiful little flower that some say was considered a lucky charm, speeding travelers on their way. The flowers are white in the center and have four baby-blue lobes with tiny darker blue pinstripes. Another little plant is called “henbit deadnettle,” with tubular purple flowers. Some of these plants have amazing names, don’t they?

All these leaves and flowers made a tiny jungle inviting us to lie in their softness and explore smells and colors as if it was a tiny world all of its own, separate from streets and sidewalks and the things we normally notice. 

And so, never mind the calendar – it is spring. Good morning! May the year treat us well.