Oh, That Smell

I sat outside on the patio to eat my lunch today. A pleasant, if overcast 65. First time this season, even though we did have a very warm first full week of February. And Spring little more than a week away. All good.

My mother likes updates of what’s what as dormancy is broken by trees and shrubs—in the woods, the yard, the garden, the nursery—and especially she likes reports on what’s flowering.

The frontrunners this year the usual suspects. Some cherries, pears, daffodils, of late forsythia. The list is a visual inventory, peaches—the two dwarf varieties way ahead of the other varieties.

Knockouts leafing as well the past few weeks.

Buds are swelling on the poplars, apples, plums, and Japanese maples. First leaves are appearing on the dogwood, red maples, azaleas, and burning bushes.

Of course, the birds for a month have advertised a change in the air. Eider ducks, mallards, Canada geese, and this year a pair of Red-tailed hawks that also seem set to nest as well. Not as dramatically obvious—to me, at least—I fully expect the usual suspects to bring little ones into our fold out here. Mockingbirds, bluebirds, cardinals, blue jays.

Not sure about the robins as they seem to drift in and out on the tide of temperature changes.

Something different today, however. The air, the scent of, that smell. Verdant? Not quite. Viridescent? A wetness, an earthiness, vegetative, loamy. Spring.

The field plowed, the garden tilled. The green fuse lit, eh, Mr. Yeats?