“Behold, my friends, the spring is come; the earth has gladly received the embraces of the sun, and we shall soon see the results of their love.” Sitting Bull
Spring officially commences with the Equinox; culturally, the beginning is Easter, its symbols of rebirth all wrapped up in pastels. But for the gardener, spring starts with the earliest signs of the season. Ever since we were children we’ve searched for glimpses – ruffles of columbine, spears of narcissus, curlicues of tulips — all piercing through the frozen earth to provide us with the promise of spring. I know I’m not alone in continuing this ritual; gardeners share their discoveries, announcing the treasures they’ve braved the cold, and unlikelihood, to find, rendering us in the ensuing weeks “slaves to a springtime passion for the earth”.
The early emergence of new growth in the garden corresponds with transformative measures in our environs. White becomes the recessive color, receding into the woods, a faint haze rising in the Little River valley as stirring roots flush the snarl of brambles with singular threads of red and green and gold. Pails suspend from maple trees, their spigots rhythmically dripping sap. Brooks break free of frozen claws, the water splashing against glistening rocks, and the ice slowly loses its grip on ponds to reveal the black surfaces rippling beneath the season’s stiff breezes. Wherever we walk we hear the thaw, the surest sign of spring — the scent of earth and moisture permeating the air. And though the cold clings to the forest, in “those March days…when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade,” its streams and vernal pools and swamps are rimmed with one of New England’s gems – the mottled cowls which unfurl to the leathery scrolls of skunk cabbage. The natural world brings us so many arrivals. We rejoice in the return of the robins, the discovery of a nest with a bright blue egg in the crook of a tree. The flash of the red-wing blackbirds in the marshes, alighting on their cat-tail sentries, the courtship of the woodcocks, performing their spiral dances, and the turkeys, strutting their regalia in a minuet waltz. We listen for the melodic trill of the warbler, the hum of the honeybees collecting the pollen sprouting from the plump spines of the pussy willow’s silvery catkins, and evenings for the chorus of peep frogs.
In our gardens, the first brush strokes of spring are bright and bold. Forsythia is everywhere in New England. Since it’s an unimpressive plant 48 weeks of the year, we must attribute its early color to its popularity as it punctuates lawns and forms golden walls in the landscape. Forsythia is followed with that “host of golden daffodils”. We know where those cheerful stretches are in our neighborhoods, and in our own yards, we hurry to uncover them in the slim moments of time between a swift spike in the temperature and a threatening freeze. What a thrill – to find the yellow straps beneath the leaves we rake away, twice when they quickly green beneath the warming sun, and thrice when their petals open and their trumpets announce that it’s spring.
“The flowers of late winter and early spring occupy places in our hearts well out of proportion to their size,” and as with spring’s first appearance from the frosty soil, my attention returns to the little jewels, the frailer flowers which reflect the frailty of the season: the sunny tete-a-tetes, clusters of tiny lanterns crisscrossing a stepping stone path, the deep purple petals of the miniature irises painting gray rocks, the scattering of the pastel crocus circling my mother’s sycamore tree, and the golden throated variety at the entrance to our own home, the first to welcome pollinating visitors, clumps of snowdrops in the shadows of evergreens, squill creating swaths of sapphire in the grass, the carnival glass saucers of hellabores, the fairy caps of leucojum, the pendulant trout lilies and trilliums and the aptly named ‘checkered lilies’, so demure as to require a sharp-eyed search.
Later in spring our lawns fill with seasonal bliss as the branches of shrubs and trees swell with bloom. No place celebrates these weeks as gloriously as New England, where “the earth laughs in flowers”. It is our most joyous season. Magenta blossoms smothering the umbrella of the red bud, magnolia’s globes opening, splaying pink petals, the salmon and ivory bracts floating along dogwood’s horizontal layers, the peach tree’s pale petals deepening, their centers echoing the wine color of its leaves, pink parasols of weeping cherries, bright arbors of crab apples, billowy white pears, the gentle blush of the apple orchards, viburnum’s perfumed veils, the succession of sparkling azaleas, cascading bouquets of bridal wreath spirea, dripping racemes of lilacs. These “last in the dooryard bloom’d” are among the most fragrant of spring’s flowers; on older properties lilacs are often paired where they once flanked the privy. I look forward to the scent of several old-fashioned favorites: the bracing spurs of witch hazel, viburnum and daphne, the delicacy of their blossoms belying the intensity of their perfume, the nectarous honeysuckle threading the woodland, citrus scented ‘mock orange’, sweet Williams’ spicy clove, the heavenly vanilla of valerian, the intoxicating sweetness of hyacinth , and a favorite, lily-of-the-valley, their miniature bells emitting the essence of spring. With scent so closely associated with memory, these flowers evoke a sense of nostalgia, and naturally, romance, which is also attributed to this season, when “always it’s spring, and everyone’s in love, and flowers pick themselves”. From the messages children convey with daisies and pansies to the passionate expression of bleeding hearts, the spring garden is lush with sensuous tulips and irises, delicate coral bells and columbine, ethereal lady’s mantle and catmint, and spires of baptisia and lupine and foxgloves — romantics all.
On a homelier level, yet no less exhilarating, the season’s firsts – the first sheets on the clothesline, the first barefoot across the grass, the first picnic, and its subtleties: the flecks of copper and rust and sage stitching the woods, the confetti of apple blossoms falling like snowflakes in the orchard, the bluets freckling the lawn, the plumpening rhubarb, the stirring of everything – the “spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you’ve got it, you want—oh, you don’t quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!”
Of course, we face the season’s fickleness with far less enthusiasm. Temperamental, volatile, unpredictable, spring “is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine”. Yet this element, too, is emblematic, for spring, above all else, is the season of appreciation.
Compliments to Robert Frost, Charles Dickens, William Wordsworth, Gertrude Wister, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, e. e. cummings, and Frances Hodgson Burnett, respectively; we invite our local poets to pen their own words on spring and submit them to us for publication!
Dayna McDermott