The budding time

Now is the budding time.Trees up here have removed their winter gowns and stand naked waiting to be dressed in tender greens.

Have you ever noticed that nature begins the warm seasons with strong yellow-golds in forsythia and daffodil, and ends the warm season with the same tones in goldenrods and in the leaves of birches?

I gaze out at the wooded hills and watch the rapid changes.  Seeming rows of red tips on the maples, alternated with evergreen. Each day more red gives heathered hue to the canopy and to the underbrush.  Spring belongs to the Impressionist style, the changes come so very quickly!

I wonder what it feels like to the woodlands.  To me, standing here gazing, it all looks warm and still.  Yet the energy, the rapid cell division and specialization is amazing!  Each day is a new scene!

Forsythia have just bloomed this week. Yet, 300 feet closer to sea level, the crocus and forsythia have been bloomed for two weeks already.  1,000 feet closer to sea level, there are...Magnolia!

All around my apartment are shallow beds of bulbs in a hurry to reach up green.  It will be a delightful surprise!

My own perennials have shivered through the winter, high in the woods of Huntington.  I was unable to cover them with leaves last November.   I will visit them in a week.  This will be a surprise, also.

I feel the need to find a better home for them.  Where they are now, I cannot haul enough water to them.  Nor can I shower them with apreciation daily.

I know that they are visited by the wild turkeys, and the quail.  Birds sing to them, too.