It's marsh marigold time

Last week, mid-week, we checked one of our favorite rural roadsides to see if marsh marigolds had started blooming yet. We've been checking this particular stretch of road once or twice a week since late March and last week were rewarded with  the sight of a number of marsh marigold plants coming into bloom.

marsh marigolds blooming in late April

Photo by J. Harrington

We've also noticed more turkeys disappearing into roadside brush in a variety of places in the area. They're out of winter roosts and moving around, or being moved around by turkey hunters. We've even had a few cleaning up under the sunflower chip feeder. All of Nature, except the weather, seems to realize it's Spring. More and more dandelions are popping up along the roadside ditches near the house. Day lilies seem to have undergone an arrested development phase since they don't appear to have grown much during the cold of this past week. We probably won't see their orange flowers until June, by which time we'll be in meteorological Summer.  That's about it for today. We have to spend the afternoon debating whether it's worth watching tonight's Oscars. Right now we're leaning more toward reading a good book.

Instructions on Not Giving Up

Ada Limón - 1976-

More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.

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