Birth of the Spring

Friday I left my office at 3 and headed for the Woods. The day was too inescapable. Warm soft sun, 65 degrees F. I propped up the fence in the NW and then walked in past the NW Pond. After a good slow soaking inch and a third of rain earlier in the week, the tops of the leaves in the litter had just dried again with the soft warmth. All through the Woods, the trees were waking. Rain, mild warmth, enough previous winter cold to start the clock fresh for the new season, and now mid February daylight hours growing rapidly. At home the silver maples out front have swelling and opening flower buds. In the Woods the elm flowers are beginning to open. By the East Pond I disturbed a whitetail doe and 3 yearlings who sprinted and bounded away east.. but not far. The doe stared curiously at me as I sang my deer song and waved. The green in the delta is not much more developed than weeks ago. The Eastern Wash had plenty of water at the Elm Bridge. I could see where the flow had spilled out of the Wash and pushed west and south clearing the leaves. Here and there, there were winding tracks of armadillos nosing through the leaf litter hunting for invertebrates.

A Day Out of Time

This afternoon at 4 PM I went to the Woods to witness the strange day. 75F this afternoon (85F tomorrow) in the first half of February. The warmth in the Woods was like a startled waking at midnight to a blast of bright sun. It did not feel right. The Woods are still locked down.. tree buds are not opening, no creatures are moving from their burrows. Yet the warmth felt like a day in early April. There was one nymphalid butterfly flying away from the SW Gate as I entered.. maybe a half dozen small moths flying elsewhere across the Woods. I wonder what will be the fate of animals adapted to shutting down in the winter, pupating, burrowing, stopping development. If they wake and begin to move too soon, they will find nothing to eat and may be caught out in the winter weather that is returning in 3 days.
The leaf litter on the forest floor is now no longer new. It has decomposed under snow and been exposed to desiccation and decay for 3-4 months. Here and there around the woods snaking serpentine paths of armadillos or other creatures in the litter, are left as signs of their foraging on forest floor life, snails, isopods, beetles, millipeds, fungi. Interesting to see where the foragers go, in slightly deeper litter, near decomposing logs, near larger logs, not so much on the raised upper slopes with thin litter. The experts foragers know where to find life.
On Monday there will be significant rain. It has been a dry winter. The Eastern Wash still has some water to the Elm Bridge. It will flood into the southern Woods on Monday afternoon as the rain, that is not spring, falls on the soil and litter that should be in the middle of winter. Katie said it feels like the apocalypse.