(Plants and Birds Just Go Together)
This particular time in the winter garden is challenging to look past the brown and golds…the sullen attitude the cold and clouds are so good at bringing along. Vibrancy is not in the winter vocabulary. (But red is certainty vivacious when it wants to be! ♥️). That is, of course, when I run a search in my gallery of photos for the color red and I am quickly reminded that the browns and golds can’t stick around forever.
But it was just this week that the male cardinal decided it was time to brush up on his vocals and start belting out his tunes for his lady. In the tallest tree he senses changes, and sings differently. And louder than he has in months.
Red-tail hawks are seen in pairs perhaps and great-horned owls are already well into their courting. Love is in the air they say. And while the ground seems silent, I know there is quite the chorus underneath that is sooner than later going to burst forth. The bluebells will emerge as they do every spring, and while I long for their arrival with haste, I am just as taken with how quickly they dissapear when the cool spring is overtaken by warmer rays of sun.
The winter is far from over yet, but tiny clues are at the ready, like a pit crew for native plants. It won’t be long before I will be able to take a clue from nature and notice the red oak finally shedding its leaves to ready for the spring growth. I’ll look for signals in my early spring garden like the tiny magenta flowers of the hazelnut. They will all be there, at the ready, and before we know it the brown and gold of winter will be under pressure to maintain its stronghold.
Spring will be ready. So very much ready. As will I.
