Nature Stories

"Come in, my friend. Here everything is cool and shade. A few specks of light. Look at that beetle on that cow pat, like a needle shining on a thick cravat." Jules Renard, from "The Wood"









You say you may need a little inspiration as the ground and the plants and the trees still remain gray and beige in late March.  You may here the chickadee in the background off in the shrubs across the street.  You could hear the new chortle of the red-winged.  That is a start.  I see the magnolia buds are thick as small pouches full of powder and wings. A green tuft has just risen, as if overnight, under the new patch bark near the sticky rose bush stem.  There is more to come.  Be patient, give it a month, you will see. At the Limestone Prairie Garden what a rush of color to come, like an invasion against the husky gray bearded early spring. Nearly out of control will be the purple prairie clover, all those little bare helmets bearded underneath this time purple.  Now take a look behind that.  Is that little bluestem outfitted by the side-oats grass? You will very much like the wispy prairie smoke.

How audacious. Who, exactly, came up with this design, such small and lively heads, professor hair unhatted. If this purple is too dark, wait until the little suns in between flare by the prairie coreopsis

and the long canes of goldenrod prodding the open sky by a hidden hand somewhere far below the ground.  Now you must zoom back out, as if camera, if you can; listen now to the warblers, the thrushes, the nuthatches, the cardinal flash past like a single red bolt, an ink streak.  Why, what do the remaining white and red pines say when they shoulder up to the tall wind? Now zoom back in, the huddling turkeys crawl across the drumlin like foot soldiers waiting for the chestnut husk to finally open.