Another American Adventure: more signs of spring

Sunday, April 7, 2013

more signs of spring

We're going into a rainy spell, but it is definitely warmer! This is the very first crop of dandelions that we've spotted ...

A bird feather on a branch ...

... and John being a hot dog ...

3 comments:

BarbaraApril 7, 2013 at 12:40 PM
Warm and rainy today here, too. Warm for us is above 10 C (55 F). Spring is upon us at last!
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beth cioffolettiApril 8, 2013 at 8:07 AM
Yeah! So nice to go without gloves and hat!
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BarbaraApril 8, 2013 at 9:42 PM
The buds here are pretty small and hard to find. But the potholes are plentiful. [I still keep a pair of lined leather gloves in my pocket.]
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"In those first days, people said, a squirrel could run the long length of Pennsylvania without ever touching the ground. In those first days, the woods were white oak and chestnut, hickory, maple, sycamore, walnut, wild ash, wild plum, and white pine. The pine grew on the ridgetops where the mountains' lumpy spines stuck up and their skin was thinnest.

"The wilderness was uncanny, unknown. Benjamin Franklin had already invented his stove in Philadelphia by 1753, and Thomas Jefferson was a schoolboy in Virginia; French soldiers had been living in forts along Lake Erie for two generations. But west of the Alleghenies in western Pennsylvania, there was not even a settlement, not even a cabin. No Indians lived there, or even near there.

"Wild grapevines tangled the treetops and shut out the sun. Few songbirds lived in the deep woods. Bright Carolina parakeets - red, green, and yellow - nested in the dark forest. There were ravens then, too. Woodpeckers rattled the big trees' trunks, ruffed grouse whirred their tail feathers in the fall, and every long once in a while a nervous gang of empty-headed turkeys came hustling and kicking through the leaves - but no one heard any of this, no one at all."

Annie Dillard, An American Childhood.