Looking For Signs

Portions of this piece first appeared in The Vermont Standard.

I’ve been walking around Woodstock, looking for signs of renewal.  It’s mid-May and the official start of Spring was many weeks ago.  Here’s a little about what I found along the roadsides, in the forest, and in my own front yard.

The trees aren’t yet in full leaf, but the snow has mostly receded, although some is visible on the ski run runs at Killington Mountain, in the distance.
Daffodils have popped up all over.  I love the clumps of multiple varieties that dot the meadows and berms.  It looks like they’ve been sprinkled around at random, by fences and stone walls.  This cluster beneath a beautiful but still barren birch tree makes a great spot for meditation.
The red trillium, my daughter’s favorite wildflower, is also known as stinking Benjamin. Its odor might remind you of a wet dog.  That’s apparently appealing to flies, who pollinate it.  Please don’t touch, though!  It can take up to 15 years for trillium to flower, and plucking its red petal trio can kill the plant or inhibit blooming for many years. 
The red juice in its underground stem gives the bloodroot its name.  It’s said that Native Americans used it as a dye for clothing, baskets and war paint.  Ants help the bloodroot propagate—they drag its seeds to their nests, eat off a fleshy part called an elaiosome, and leave the rest of the seed to germinate.
Hepatica has been called the gem of the woods; I agree.  It’s usually an early bloomer because it’s buffered from cold and wind by the fine but dense hairs that cover its stems and the green bracts surrounding its flower.  It can self pollinate, but small bees love it, and so do the ants.
Some find the hardy coltsfoot, on the left, an invasive nuisance, but I was glad to see these yellow blooms poking up out of the mud on the Maple Trail at the Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Park.  I spotted violets along the trail as well.   I’ve read that the ancient Greeks and Romans cultivated violets; they’re among my favorites too.
These Painted Turtles enjoy the sun after their winter-time hibernation in the mud.  Evidence suggests that the species has been around for at least 15 million years.  The turtles wouldn’t let me get too close; at the sound of my footsteps they all disappeared into the water.
By Friday of last week, some spring green began to poke out on the tree branches, and I looked forward to sustained warmer temperatures.   Alas, those hopes were dashed on Saturday, when Woodstock woke up to a blanket of snow.