With the first blush of spring, regardless of what the calendar says, we all go a little bit loopy.
Like children being gifted a full day of recess, the weight of winter is thrown on a pile made up of heavy coats and mismatched gloves. Each school’s lost and found box overflows this time of year with accessories everyone wishes to be done with for good.
It makes no sense to celebrate like it’s summer in late February and early March, but we just can’t help ourselves. I watched kids walking around in shorts and light-weight shirts one day last week. The next morning they would surely be searching for heavy sweatshirts and winter coats once again.
The downside of an early burst of too much warmth weighs heavy in the balance of Mother Nature. We need the cycles of prolonged winter to play out before toasty warm, sunny days come along to stay. Our bee hives count on that slow evolution, along with all the flowering bulbs that are part of the cycle.
My daughter and son-in-law were lucky enough to buy a property a few years ago, a large and lovely wooded place on which the previous owners had sown plenty of wildflowers. Together, the two of them now have planted thousands more bulbs across their property.
It was a worry, when I stopped in one remarkably sunny afternoon, to see so much green poking up through the ground in February.
Some of the earliest flowering ground cover, winter aconite, blossomed in the areas open to sunshine, presenting itself as the tiniest flower imaginable, so bright and sunny yellow, and then was snapped in an overnight frost.
Even in the best of typical circumstances, it never lasts long enough. It’s a shame to see it come and go in one brief day simply because it couldn’t wait to make its appearance.
Patience is required in bushel baskets to get through the last stretch of winter. With a deep sigh, it will be blown away one of these days, but it’s never quite soon enough to suit the majority of us.
