By Anna Lehr Mueser, Public Relations Manager
Today we mark the vernal equinox, the moment when winter, officially, becomes spring. Edith Holden, who, in 1906 published The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady, notes that March was named “stormy month” by the Anglo-Saxons. Indeed, it has been a stormy March, with more to come, it seems.
But let’s take a moment now to feel glad that spring is truly on the way.
We see it in the small green things pushing up from dead leaves and in the many trays of transplants growing in our Native Plant Nursery; red maple is already in bloom—with small red wind-pollinated spidery flowers high in the treetops. We smell spring in the earthy, damp air, letting us know thaws are here. We hear it in the spring calls of cardinals, red-bellied woodpeckers, and song sparrows.
Two garter snakes and a water snake were lazily sunning themselves next to the springhouse in late February, only inches from each other.