Four days into official spring (the equinox came and went while I was in Atlanta, where spring is much further along than it is here!), we have one nice, warm day before we go back to chilly for the next week.  The frogs are taking full advantage, singing their comb-plucking song loudly in the wetlands.  

Here are other things I noticed:

Forsythia is blooming:

The pussy willow catkins have greened up with pollen: 

The Siberian elms are flowering (I know, the photo is terrible.  They're high up; I'm short.)  This is the first step that will lead to me pulling tons of tiny elm seedlings from all over my yard later this year.  Yea.

Cornelian cherry dogwood flowers have bees buzzing all around them -- I managed to get one in a picture!

And, at some point recently, the "pine" tree (it's not a pine but all the kids call it one, I believe it's a spruce) at the old homestead nearby has fallen over.  This large tree marked the site of the front yard of an old farmhouse that was razed in the 70's.  The tree was a favorite of students, so it's sad to see it fallen!  RIP, spruce/pine tree.

More Flowers People Ignore

Actually, this catkin -- which is a pussy willow -- is the one catkin people don't ignore!

Today the American Hazel catkins are starting to loosen up!

Yellow

Forsythia blooms.

I first saw daffodils blooming as far north as my house on Friday, but all the open ones were right by house foundations.  Perhaps it's slightly warmer there... anyhow, I don't have any daffodils planted right by my foundation, and didn't really want to get that close to someone's house to take a picture for fear they'd think I was fishy and call the police.  SO I waited until today, when I found an open one farther from a home. 

Look how yellow the pussy willow pollen!  And speaking of willows, the weeping willow catkins are starting to appear. 

So it's a yellow day!

Wait, There's More!

Note to self: Stop publishing entries at lunch.  This time of year, there will likely be more discoveries by day's end!  In this case... the first American hazels are both male-flowering (catkins are swelling) and female-flowering (those are the tiny dark pink tufts there).  In a clump of shrubs, some are in full flowers, others look like they did in the middle of winter, with no signs of sexuality at all! 

Speaking of catkins -- the best known of them are pussy willows, which are also starting to bloom. 

And look!  I finally got a picture of Sandhill Cranes.  They are flying over in large numbers today; I've heard reports of sightings from several people. 

Flowering Willows

Pussy willow

Weeping willow 

Ick.

The nice weather lasted... 1 day!  Yesterday was rainy -- a cold front coming through, and by evening the rain was really sleet.  This morning dawned COLD.  And muddy.  

Still, spring is marching on.  Goldfinches are gold, and daffodils are blooming.  Some shrubs -- black currants, lilacs -- are starting top leaf out, so that we can see a springy green haze in some places when we look across lawns and fields.  Catkins are finally fluffy on willows, aspen, and other trees...  

We're Blooming and Leafing

There is a lot going on right now.  And a lot of it is going on early.  Most people I talk to make some comment about how the weather is freaking them out.  My response is something along the lines of, it may be freaky, but we can't do anything about it, so let's enjoy it... because if you ignore the fact that its mid-March, it's perfect weather... not too hot for an early morning run, warm enough to read outside all afternoon, but not so warm that you get uncomfortable weeding, and then cool enough in the night time for sleeping under the covers with open windows.  

BUT... if you want to add more data to the freak-out part of it... I could include photos of about a hundred things, but no one would bother to scroll through them.  Here are some highlights. 

Violet

 Violets flowered today, which have previously been noted in early April...

Bloodroot

The bloodroot started to open... over a month earlier than last year (April 21 they looked like this), and a couple of weeks before 2010 bloom-time.

Hepatica

Hepatica isn't quite open but it's close, I mean, this flower will be open tomorrow.  Again, this is exactly how they looked on April 21 last year.  Same with the trillium and mayapples (Aprilapples, this year?), below.

Trillium

Mayapples poke through the soil.

Ginger leaves emerging from the earth.

Other things to report...

• A lot of surprising leaf-outs, including...
• Crab apples leafing out (3/16)
• Willows catkining and leafing out (3/17)
• Wasps extremely active (3/18)
• Currants leafing out (3/17) 
• Maple-leaf viburnum leafing out (3/18)
• And today, there were tons of millipedes undulating their way across the trail.  I was trying to avoid them, but it became too difficult, and eventually, I had to just decide that some myriapods are in the wrong place at the wrong time.
• Spice bushes flowering (since last week, but I liked this photo:) 

Oh, my!

Bluebirds and killdeers and herons, oh my!

Maple flowers and aspen catkins and pussy willows, oh my!

Celandine poppies and tulips emerging, oh my!

Have we SPRUNG?

Wind in the Willows

First order of business. Thank you to the higher powers. Today was a lovely day, cool but sunny.

This sketch shows willow sticks at various stages of their bloom, both of which are present now. The sketch was too tall for the scanner!

April Flowers

I put 3 daffodils in a dragonfly frog-vase. I endeavored to sketch them. I thought it would be simple. Such a familiar trumpet shape... not so. They were quite difficult. I'm not entirely satisfied with the results, but I suppose you can judge for yourself.

I thought this photograph made a simple pussy willow catkin, newly green with pollen, look rather grand. Imposing, even.

Forsythia (below left) provide quite a pop of color... though they're not my favorite flower or shrub, they are definitely noticeable. Not like the diminutive flowers of the elms (below right), whose purple anthers are so dark as to seem brown and whose small stature renders them unnoticeable.

Little Peeks

Peeking out from behind its protective bud scale, that tickly reminder of youth, the pussy willow, emerges... calling our tactile inner children to stand and pet the fuzzy little cat(kin) toes before they fulfill their pollen-y destiny.

Which hazel? The witch hazel! I just couldn't wait until these fully opened, with their streamer-like petals fully uncurled, decorating for the upcoming party that is spring. So I have showed them here still curled up tightly... but the buds are open and the bright orange is clearly visible!

Well, this isn't really a good picture of anything. But see, right in the middle, looking like a stick at an odd angle, that's a hawk. Carrying a vole. We had a right-time-right-place moment this afternoon. A red-tailed hawk swooped down to pick off a vole in the prairie right near our outdoor classroom. We watched it fly with the struggling rodent dangling from its talons... it circled around us and then off into the distance, presumably to eat its meal without 44 eyes staring at it. (I didn't get my camera out until after I made sure all the kids had seen, and then I had to get over the awesomeness of it, and then I had to think to unzip my coat and get out the camera and turn it on and by the time all that occurred, it was already pretty far away. Oh, well. I took a mental picture.)

Yesterday...

A trout lily's petals peel back to reveal long, yellow anthers. These aren't in my yard. I suspect the ones in my yard are going to be just leaves this year as they settle in. More specifically, 2 leaves. But I hope they'll be happy and spread and make more leaves and flowers in years to come, like these wild ones which carpet the forest floor.

I don't even know what this is. It's some sort of ornamental garden flower, probably an annual, but its layers of opening petals in this bright yellow color were striking to me.

Weeping willows are swaying in the wind these days, with their tiny green leaves and long bright yellow flowers... They are some of the greenest trees around.

Yesterday was also the second day in a row I saw a goldfinch sporting its bright yellow, celebratory summer colors.

More April Fools

We happened on a magnolia tree today that was flowering -- some blossoms fully open, most in process, and some still tightly encased in their large furry buds. Above is my sketch study of some of them. It was very windy, which meant both that the flowers would not hold still for sketching and that their floral scent surrounded me. (Actually, a mother with small children came up to me and said that she liked to sketch but she couldn't get her kids to sit still so she didn't do it any more -- I responded that I couldn't get the plant to be still, either!)

Here are some other tree flowers I saw today:

(In order, a red maple, a variety of cherry not native to this continent, a pussy willow -- look at those colors -- and a cottonwood.)

These tulips must be an early-blooming variety, because most are not close to flowering, even in the city.

These little dwarf irises are a beautiful spring treat... as are the Dutchman's breeches, but I am a little sad because mine aren't even emerging yet, which means they're probably not coming back. I mean, this was a little south of my house, but not that far. Sadness. (But I still have some hope, I'll keep you posted.)

And my last bit of plant news -- after I posted this morning, I went into the front yard and saw the above daffodil. I have no idea why the shaded front yard daffodils flowered before the back yard ones, but today is the first day I've seen the full-sized ones blooming around here.

In animal news, I also sketched this pair of geese that was both nestling their heads in their backs and resting, if not sleeping. I also saw a mink. It ran right past me while I was sketching, and at first I didn't know what the brown thing was, but I ended up getting a good and pretty long view of it. I was drawing, so there was no hope of getting a photo, but it was still pretty cool.

And a last bit of news, I heard on NPR today -- and I assume it was serious, although they were doing all sorts of April Fool's broadcasts, but this one wouldn't be very funny -- that we had record-breaking high temperatures. It hit 83 degrees F. And it was warmer than many southern cities like L.A. (that's the only one I remember). Funny, if people went on trips for spring break and it ended up being warmer here than there! Ha! That's like nature's April Fool.

More From Today.

OK... first thing's first. Today is ICE OFF day! This morning there was still a largish mass floating, but strong winds broke it up. There are some ice-cube sized chunks that have floated over to the edge, and were making a clinking sound as they were pushed together in the wavelets. It sounded like nature was throwing a cocktail party to celebrate spring! (You know, before it snows again.)

The sexually precocious American Hazels have begun to display their bright pink female flowers. (Many shrubs have none yet, but several have branches adorned with these almost impossibly small but beautifully colored flowers.) Alders are also girl-flowering (in addition to the male flowers noted earlier) now, but I didn't get a picture of them.

I have discovered, by the way, that if I carry a white index card with me, I can slip it behind small subjects and it makes it a lot easier to get the auto-focus to focus on the proper thing. I recognize that the sacrifice here is the artfulness of the photos, but sometimes, the goal is scientific documentation. Especially when I have 20+ kids waiting for me and not understanding why I am stopping to take a picture of something random like a bud when they are studying something totally different like birds, for example. So the boring backgrounds aren't necessarily my first choice, but they serve their function.

Many buds are swelling up and showing peeks of green between their scales. Not that many species, but enough that it's starting to be exciting out there...

shown above, Linden, serviceberry, and weeping willow (with catkins showing).

And more from the baby plant front, here are prairie smoke flower buds (left) and baby bergamots, in the shadow of Naomi (right).