Granby Drummer (https://granbydrummer.com/author/nina-jamison/)
I always like to stop and smell the flowers, and I also pet moss. The texture provides a soothing tactile experience. Gazing at an expanse of moss-covered ground is calming as well—an emerald carpet so deeply green you might think of Ireland. Or, somewhat closer to home, the Hoh Rain Forest in the Pacific Northwest.
It is the middle of March as I write this and 67 degrees! Weather enthusiasts would call this a false spring yet signs of the season are all around. In the widening circles of soggy brown earth, tree bark is radiating warmth as it absorbs the sunshine and melts the surrounding snow.
Two harbingers of spring are the mourning cloak butterfly and the rising sap of oak and maple trees. The mourning cloak is one of several species that overwinter as adults, dark brown, almost black, with a line of iridescent spots and a border of bright yellow.
If someone asks what’s your favorite color, most likely brown is not high on the list. Yet for those who love walking in the November forest, the burnt siennas, umbers, chestnuts, taupes, rusts and many related hues offer a earthy warmth to calm the soul.
Each September we try to predict the intensity of the peak autumnal display. It’s more than a coin toss, as foliage reports take rainfall, sunshine and temperature into consideration.
Six months from now, deep in a January freeze, it will be hard to recall these shining summer days. Birdsong has been replaced by the late afternoon droning of insects. Early summer flowers start to fade and goldenrods and asters brighten the roadside. The harvest season is in high gear with all manner of ripe fruits and vegetables in abundance at local farmstands.
Two years ago, I purchased a bird house thinking how lovely it would look in my tiny garden. I wasn’t sure if birds would ever nest in it, but I followed online instructions on how and where to situate it and a few weeks later I saw twigs sticking out from under the roof. We had a nest in progress—a wren! She’s back this year and another nest was built.
Years ago, I received a phone call from Melissa, my cousin in Philadelphia. It was early May and she wanted to know about a baby hummingbird hovering over a small patch of flowers. After 27 years of tending to my hillside garden in Vermont, I knew the “baby” was actually a hawk moth, also known as sphinx moth.
For me the scent-sational start of spring is the smell of the rich, damp forest floor awakening. It’s actually geosmin, a Greek word meaning earth and smell, a soil-based compound produced by bacteria and blue-green algae. I take deep breaths to revitalize my winter-weary senses.
It was early February, just after a light, fluffy snowfall, but I was already thinking spring! Two of my favorite late-winter events triggered such sunny thoughts.