Spring's last leaf fall

Overnight a light dusting of snow coated the ground. It's gone now but the  sky remains cloudy and the woods continue to blow. Typical March weather in the North Country. The winds are strong enough to roil bare and barren tree branches. The emergence of Spring is causing leaf buds to begin to swell. The swelling is loosening the stem attachments of oak leaves that had made it through Winter still on the trees. The day has been full of oak leaves falling and scattering ahead of gusts.

maple leaf buds start swelling

Photo by J. Harrington

I remember the folk saying about March coming in or going out like a lion. Mid-March roars are a sort of different story, aren't they? Now that the branches are truly leafless, we will more easily be able to notice the first green sheens at bud burst. This morning we first noticed the buds on our maple trees swelling. Spring's dance steps are intricate enough to make our heads spin. Remember the slight of hand performed by the prestidigitator in an old fashioned shell game? Under which shell is the pea? Mother Nature keeps teasing us with hints of Spring interspersed with lapses back to Winter's fringe. And then, suddenly, daytime highs will leap into the 80s and Summer will have commenced while we look back to claim a day or two of sunshine, 70 degrees, breezes, not winds, as our enjoyable Spring of 2020. Like fans of the Twins, Vikings, Timberwolves and Wild, those of us who look forward to a season of Spring will once again get to "wait until next year." But not before pools of ephemeral beauty put us under a spell of Spring.

our Spring pool

Photo by J. Harrington

Spring Pools

By Robert Frost

These pools that, though in forests, still reflect
The total sky almost without defect,
And like the flowers beside them, chill and shiver,
Will like the flowers beside them soon be gone,
And yet not out by any brook or river,
But up by roots to bring dark foliage on.

The trees that have it in their pent-up buds
To darken nature and be summer woods --
Let them think twice before they use their powers
To blot out and drink up and sweep away
These flowery waters and these watery flowers
From snow that melted only yesterday.

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