Despite recent snow, the “spring-watch” has begun
Some years ago, I worked at a newspaper in Philadelphia, and each year the change from winter to spring was always marked by one or two readers sending in pictures of “the first robin of the season.”
These submissions really annoyed the editor. Invariably, he’d bark, “Don’t these dopes know that robins spend the winter right here? We are not running photos of robins!”
That cranky old editor was only half-right. American robins do migrate, but their year-round range covers almost all of the continental U.S. So if food is available, it’s not uncommon for the red-breasted birds to spend the whole winter right in our own backyard. They simply move into the woods, where berries are readily available, and we don’t see as much of them.
Even so, if you’d like to rejoice in the first robins of spring as they appear, be my guest. Though the birds are always close at hand, their seeming “reappearance” this time of year is truly the most commonly acknowledged harbinger of spring.
Last week, we enjoyed a touch of spring weather, only to be thrown back into winter by another snowstorm this week. But soon, the signs of spring will be unmistakable. Here are a few more.
- Blooming forsythia. Let’s be honest. The non-flowering forsythia is among the homeliest shrubs in the garden. But once this leggy tangle of branches bursts into brilliant yellow bloom, it’s one of the surest and cheeriest signs of spring. Want your forsythia to look great? Cut it way back on a three-year rotation. You’ll have to deal with the stumps for a time, but the plants will come back brighter and bonnier than ever.
- Spring in the air. You open the windows or step outside, and there it is—that unmistakably sweet smell of spring. Scientists say the rich, loamy fragrance comes from geosmin, a chemical compound produced by plant-eating bacteria in the earth. Not a very attractive notion, but boy, it sure does smell fine. There’s also nothing like the smell of freshly mowed grass. Did you know the Demeter Fragrance Company of New York counts a grass-scented cologne among its top sellers? Even better, researchers at the University of Queensland in Brisbane say the chemicals released by fresh-cut grass can actually help you improve your memory and beat stress. Ready, set, mow.
- * The next generation. Bunnies, ducklings, chicks, fawns—soon they’ll be everywhere, and that’s just the way nature planned it. Many mammals like the white-tailed deer mate in the fall and winter so their young will be born in spring, with its temperate weather and abundance of foliage and food. And Canada geese, which are so abundant around here, stop flying in flocks, and begin to travel only in mated pairs, soon to be joined by a trail of fuzzy goslings.
- Birdsong. Listen up. Soon we’ll be able to enjoy the sweetest songs of the calendar year. Come spring, our feathered friends have special reason to rejoice. They’re very vulnerable to the cold, and those that survive the winter seem to express their joy in lively song from dawn until sundown. If you’re lucky enough to live near a pond, creek or river, you’ll also hear the sweet rumble and peep of mating toads and frogs. And of course, people in rural areas should listen for the sound of woodcocks, described as a “peent.” The sound is accompanied at dusk by a zany mating dance, in which the male woodcocks launch themselves upwards, abruptly cease their flight in mid-air, then tumble to the ground, and “peent” again. That always gets the girls.
- A world of color. When my daughter was small, we sang this song, which is a “round”: A crocus raised its golden head/ to see the winter snow had fled/ The sun is out, it must be spring/ Because I heard a robin sing” (those robins again!). I still love to see the first crocuses, yellow and purple, shyly emerging from the grass, and I always remember that little song. Of course, the spring landscape is also adorned with tulips, snowdrops, daffodils, wild violets, lilies of the valley, and, later in the season, heavenly lilacs, with their ambrosia-like fragrance.
In 1908, a man named Stanton Davis Kirkham wrote a book called “In the Open,” celebrating not just the natural wonders of springtime, but also the emotions they evoke in the observer, man.
“Deep lying in all men is a poetic vein which now appears on the surface,” Kirkham wrote. “The first pussy-willows and the arrival of bluebirds arouse sentiments as common to us as the love of music: some suggestion of renewal, of awakening after the sleep of winter, which touches even the rough man and makes him kin for a day to the child.”
As we finally awake from our long slumber, and spring “shakes the violets from her lap,” he continued, “We feel the joy of travelers in sight of their native land.”
Patience is difficult at this point. We’ve waited long enough. Bring on spring!
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