Article: Spring comes early to east...
Spring comes early to east central North Carolina.
Sometimes it comes too early.
This year, the buds on the plum trees and lilacs began swelling before February ended. By the first of March, quince was blooming—as were the crisp yellow daffodils and dainty little bluets along the ditchbanks. The red camellias my mother planted around the homeplace opened their first waxy petals in January and were nearly finished by March, but her forsythia and spirea are blooming their hearts out. This past week has been mild and sunny with clear blue skies and light winds out of the southwest. Spring peepers are loud in the bottoms.
"Too early, too early!" I tell the blueberry bushes I've set out along my driveway.
"Wait till April," I tell the pear trees and grape vines.
Happy as I am to see spring flush the brown landscape with pinks and whites and greens, it's not unusual to get another killing frost between now and mid-April before the tender blossoms can set their fruit.
Dogwoods will be all right, though. The tight flower buds that appeared last fall are now starting to uncurl, but frost never really hurts them. The flowering judas and lilacs don't seem to mind a little frost either, but it'll be touch and go with early plums, apples, pears, and scuppernong grapes.
The many goldfinches that come to the feeder outside my kitchen window are already beginning to get their bright yellow mating plumage and bluebirds have staked out the three nesting boxes my brother Robert built me.
For Christmas, my nieces and nephews chipped in to give me a white aluminum martin house on a tall pole and they came over last week to put it up, halfway between my back door and the pond. Purple martins are legendary for the number of mosquitoes they eat in a season, and since the kids grumbled about getting eaten alive when they came over to swim last summer, I have a feeling their gift wasn't quite as altruistic as it might seem. So far, only sparrows and purples finches have shown any interest in the twelve-unit condo, but maybe the martins just haven't returned from their winter homes yet.
Maidie Holt, Daddy's long-time housekeeper, has started a flat of petunia seedlings under a fluorescent light in her bathroom window and she's promised to give me a dozen plants when it's time to transplant them. The cold frame sown with mixed greens that she's nursed through the winter—"my salad bowl" she calls it—is bursting at the seams now with hardy spinach, mustard, and three kinds of lettuces, and her next sowing will be in the open garden.
As Colleton County becomes more suburbanized, Daddy grumbles that it's getting harder and harder to find onion sets. He claims that seed stores nowadays "don't carry no bulbs except flowers," yet every spring, he always manages to track down a few pounds to share with my brothers and me. He and Cletus, Maidie's husband, set out two long rows in the garden they tend together, and I tucked a handful in the flower bed by my back steps so I'll have green onion tops for salads whenever I want. All three of them claim not to be superstitious, but they made sure the February moon was in the proper phase when they sowed their garden peas. Right now, they're waiting for the dark of the moon to plant potatoes.
All too soon, the thick humid heat of summer will be upon us, so I can't really complain about a long slow spring. Whether or not we get another frost, the lengthening days and mild weather make it too beautiful to stay inside and as soon as my docket is clear, court's adjourned!
© 2000 by Margaret Maron