By Jean Thomas
Spring is sprung at my house. The dog and I double our number of walks per day, weather permitting, and average about a mile per trip. And we always come back smiling. What we’re doing is not just physical exercise, but spiritual rejuvenation. Now I’m not talking about any religious kind of spiritual here, but just recharging my spirit, or attitude. By the simple act of snapping a leash on the dog and stepping outside, I close the door on artificial stimuli and go observe life at a more sedate pace. I am lucky enough to live near farms and orchards as well as forests and meadows. Right now the orchards are awash with waves of pink and white as the fruit trees respond to the season. I relapse into my worrier mode and fuss about what will happen if a killer frost comes and removes a crop like it did last year. I remind myself that I can’t fix it and move on.
It’s when I shrink my observations down that I find the most to be happy about. My little dirt road is carpeted with red maple flowers dropped from the trees. Among the flowers I see my favorite wee creatures, known formally as red efts. They’re tiny, vividly orange dragons and wander randomly on the roadway. They are carnivores and manage to find even smaller animals than themselves to feed on. I’ve never seen them in the act, but I might some day. The other stages of their life cycle are aquatic, so I don’t get to see them. Go to the Master Gardener podcast for more info about these little guys … https://ccecolumbiagreene.org/gardening/nature-calls-conversations-from-the-hudson-valley/episode-39-salamanders-earthworms-and-more
In among the litter of maple florets I see the beginning of the carpet of white petals and fluffy catkins, which will fall to the earth next. The catkins look like fake caterpillars and are the remnants of the flowers of birch and willows, while the white petals this early are mostly from the Amelanchier shrub. This one is special to fishermen, because it traditionally blooms when the shad fish travel up the river in their spring ritual. In fact, it’s known as the “shad-blow serviceberry.” That’s the white shrubs you see shining out in the underbrush in the hills along the river (and anywhere else that’s forested.) They’re often mistaken for dogwood, but the dogwood start a little later in the season and have a bigger, much more dramatic flower. Not everything is miniscule in the woods. A pair of geese is noisily warning us away from their pond in the middle of the golf course, and a huge snapping turtle almost evaded my eye as it submerged beneath the weeds in a rushing seasonal stream. It looked like a dinosaur submarine. I tried for a picture, but failed because the dog suddenly discovered her, too. I opted for a future without a vet bill and we moved along. I spy more tiny pioneers. The sedges have miniscule flowers waving in the smallest breeze, and I’m glad there is a breeze to confuse the early blackflies. I feel myself relaxing as we wander and I remember the podcast episode with Luke Vitagliano discussing this very phenomenon. You can listen in at: https://ccecolumbiagreene.org/gardening/nature-calls-conversations-from-the-hudson-valley/episode-63-nature-and-mental-health.
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