Arboretum Diary

4-5

I am not sure that the position of early spring nature reporter would fill quickly if advertised in even the most zealous of nature magazines.  What is to be reported upon in the long days of drizzle has more to do with the hopeful imagination that what lays on or underneath ground.  A long run from the Lost Woods, through Curtis Prairie and on into the Noe Woods sealed this for me once again: the ground is sodden and rising, the birds dripping wet and quiet, the small little promises of flowers budding are forced to hold their own against the barrage of droplets and the threat of night frost.  If the sun would poke out, for even two hours, as it did yesterday, the chorus begins and the flowers rise as if on cue by the inert power of photosynthesis.  If anything, the long run through various portions of the Arboretum do reveal the extreme work being done by the property crews to cut back the invasive brush in nearly every quarter, heaped up in what look like beaver dams at the edges of the

saved patches of sumac, little bluestem, goldenrod, cattails and sedge.  All of this is being prepared for the spring burning seasons but conditions must be just right. The wind has to be traveling in a near perfect west to east. Blowing north would leave smoke trails over the belt line highway which is essentially illegal; to the south, neighbors and country club might find motive to complain.  Either way, no doubt the hundreds of wild turkeys that live in these woods and find forage in everything from the chestnut trees to acorns, nuts, and maybe the hard berry left over from previous season.  All of this reveals, maybe most importantly, is the long and hardy (seems almost foolhardy) life of the growing bud that gets fooled, as the migrating birds do, by the flashes of warmth and sun only to get hampered once again by the next event.  It doesn't seem that it should be surprising that human endeavors are similarly challenged in fits of progress and steps backward. The gardeners stand in their garages, trowels in hand, ready to help along the color, then must duck back in just as quickly, the loud rapping of rain across the roof as a reminder that earnest plans are yours to make but not always yours alone to keep.