The Daily: 12 April 2025

The Greenleaf Moon is full today at 8:22pm. I haven’t said much about this moon cycle because it hasn’t felt very accurate this year. In the past, you could count on the sugar season ending when this moon is new and new leaves washing the bare trees in spring green. Some years there are apple and peach blossoms. Though this isn’t always a good thing for fruit production, because there will still be frost and there are few pollinators about to fertilize the flowers. However, it does brighten the garden mood, along with the spring bulbs that I insist on trying to grow despite rodents (it’s down to a spray of tiny early bloomers like crocus, chionodoxa and scilla and swathes of hyacinth and super-toxic narcissi for the middle of spring).

This year, we have no leaves on woody plants. There is a bit of green in those bulbs, but nothing native is up yet. Not even the tiny ephemerals like bloodroot and spring beauties that must bloom early before the fleshy native bluebells pop up and the fern fronds unravel or the tiny early risers risk being shaded out for the entirety of their very short growing season. Now, it has stopped snowing. To be more precise, the snow that has fallen of late is not sticking. But there is little to indicate that winter is over. It was 16°F just last Thursday morning. It is certainly not a leafy time. It is still brown.

The bulbs have been coming up. They don’t care about freezing. Many of them are mountain plants native to places where it is never warm. For example, the scilla are members of the asparagus family that grow in subalpine meadows throughout Asia, Africa and Europe. In my garden, the daffodils and hyacinths are starting to poke up above the leaf mould despite the frost. And garlic and over-wintered onions are the visible green in the garden beds. (There are carrots and winter roots, but they’re still under row cover, because 16° last Thursday…) Still, it is a very spare spring. Or maybe it’s a very long winter with a few intrepid exotics forging ahead despite the weather. None of the natives are up and about, knowing Vermont spring to be a dodgy venture.

I am keeping my eyes out anyway. I love the earliest spring flowers. Delicate but hardy, cheery and bright in the grey days of spring, these are garden happiness. I have been nursing along a small woodland garden full of ephemerals around my Green Man garden plaque. It’s under the cedars and doesn’t get enough light for most things, but spring sunshine falls on the patch. After about May, the sun rises behind some very tall spruces across the street and never finds a good angle to penetrate the gloom. So hellebores and spring ephemerals and ferns are about all that will grow in there.

I have bloodroot and spring beauties and virginia bluebells. I also mixed in exotics like snowdrops and cyclamen. Later in the spring the trilliums, ferns, woodland asters, and meadowrue send up a froth of spring green to brighten the area. I have one jack-in-the-pulpit which I am hoping will spread itself, as advertised. (So far no luck there; perhaps it needs a jill…) And I have a few odds and ends like woodland geranium, brunnera, pulmonaria, and forget-me-nots around the sunnier entry to this garden.

Because I am constantly trying to find plants that will deter rodents and because I no longer have a dog or small children that might chew on these rather toxic plants, I have also begun a collection of hellebores. I love these durable beauties, not least because they withstand anything with grace. But they bloom in deep shade, a very unusual trait. They also bloom either very early in the spring or very late in the autumn, bringing a rare spot of cold-weather color to the garden — as long as they are not covered in snow. This year, they are only now shaking off the snowpack and starting to get down to business.

I considered trying to start a patch of ramps in there. But for one thing, it’s really hard to get an adult body into that space without impaling yourself on cedar. Ramps are also notoriously difficult to establish, though they do like the soil under our native cedars. But there is a bigger problem. The former folks planted poisonous (and stinky) lily-of-the-valley on this property. (Because insanity…) There are things that look like lily-of-the-valley deep in this woodland corner where I can’t root them out. And ramps at their edible stage are nearly indistinguishable from lily-of-the-valley. I don’t trust myself to safely harvest ramps in a garden riddled with convallaria. (Which name sounds appropriately like the convulsions it brings on when accidentally ingested.) Now that there are hellebores in there also, it is pretty much a food-free zone.

It’s also beginning to look like a stereotypical witch garden… Which doesn’t exactly please me, but still… However, I refuse to plant things like foxglove — which takes over — deadly nightshade — which is just ugly — and monkshood which is… not. Unfortunately, it’s a large, well-behaved and elegant plant with peerlessly beautiful blue flowers that loves shade and blooms in the autumn… but it is so toxic Celtic warriors would dip their arrow tips in the concentrated juice to ensure that any nick was a kill. It was also used to eradicate wolves, as its smell is attractive to canines. Hence its other name, wolfsbane. It seems to have been in vogue in New England a while back. It grows in many gardens these days. There was even a plant here in the perennial bed. I don’t know what the former folks did to keep their dogs away from it. I sure wouldn’t risk it. But I don’t see it in garden offerings as much now as I did when we first moved to New England. I have a nasty feeling that lessons were learned the hard way…

One typical faerie garden plant is not poisonous. The English and Spanish bluebells of the genus hyacinthoides (so named by Carl Linnaeus because he thought they looked like hyacinths) are very beneficial. They are also indicator species for a healthy woodland soil, one that has been undisturbed for a long time. They spread swathes of spring blue under hardwood forests throughout Eurasia and down into the eastern Mediterranean. Similar to mushrooms, they will form rings in an echo of a rotted tree stump, showing where the soil is most fertile. It is said that if you wander into these rings, you will be lost to Faerie — unless you carry a bit of iron in your shoe and have mugwort and thyme and marjoram on hand. Tossing these plants into a faerie ring is supposed to confuse the blighters and break their spells.

But in any case, bluebells are fantastic plants. Aside from their association with good woodland health, they also promote human well-being. In the herbal medicine of medieval monks, they have been used to successfully treat snakebite and leprosy. Salves made from ground bluebell are effective treatments for many kinds of vaginal infections, both killing the microbes and soothing the skin. Bluebell has also been used as a mild diuretic and as a blood thickener. The bulbs can be dried and ground into a powder that makes a starch for ironing clothes that is softer than commercial varieties and less prone to building up a crusty residue than potato starch. The entire plant contains inulin, a natural glue that was widely used in bookbinding for millennia, and the sap has been used as an adhesive in wound treatments. There is also promise for modern medicine. Several of the extracts from both green parts and bulbs are similar to compounds that we use to treat HIV and cancer.

The North American native bluebells are not in this genus and have very different properties. However, they are also an indicator species, preferring to be undisturbed on a humus-rich soil. But Native Americans used them in medicine also. Virginia bluebells (mertensia virginica, a plant in the highly beneficial borage family) have been used to treat many maladies. The roots can be used as a generic antidote to many poisons and an effective treatment of venereal disease. The green parts have successfully treated tuberculosis and whooping cough, soothing the cough and calming the immune response. The plant is also a generic pulmonary aid, used a tonic against the viruses of spring. It is fairly good at loosening up sinuses under the assault of spring blooms.

Now, the plants may still be dozing, but there are other signs of spring. The female cardinals have vanished, meaning they are sitting on nests while the bright red males defend territory and bring food. My feeders, stocked with chile-soaked mealworms and seeds and bits of dried fruit, are running empty every week. I finally broke down and bought a forty pound bag from Agway. The goldfinches are back, and the males are in the process of turning bright yellow. They look rather patchy right now. Soon they will be like tiny lemons on the wing. I’ve heard the warblers, though not seen any yet, and the wrens have considered nesting on my back porch again this year. One male really wants to make that enclosed space his home. He deeply resents my presence. I ran across a whole flock of robins and a few bluebirds on my lunch-time walk the other day. They were noisily feeding on the berries of staghorn sumac that grows along the side of the road. I also saw the first swallows, though they didn’t seem to be hanging around, swooping a bit over the sheep pasture across the street from my office and then disappearing.

I’ve seen evidence of the groundhog around the house, though thankfully not out in the veg garden. Yet. There have also been sightings of skunks, possums, minks, and chipmunks. These latter are sure signs of spring. They do not like the cold and require high volumes of food each day they are active. I have not seen any foxes, and there still aren’t many owls about. (Need more predators…) We did have an exciting encounter with a coy-wolf in our neighborhood. She was likely a youngster exploring motherhood for the first time. She hasn’t yet learned to be wary of humans, and the trash cans around the neighborhood are too tantalizing to pass up. She is huge, about the size of a timber wolf or a great pyrenees. Perhaps she has some domestic dog in her ancestry also. But she has a coyote face, more fox-like and pointy than broad and wolfish.

But the best spring event of the year so far happened this past week. On a day when the temperature had plummeted by about 40°F with windchills down in the low teens, I came home from work in sort of a foul mood. (For one thing, drastic shifts in weather make my arthritic body throb in pain.) I got out of the car and immediately noticed high trilling whistles and a lot of twitchy activity in the maple next to my garage. (I should say I can’t actually use the garage right now… so I was plugging in the car outside, sort of an involved ritual…) At first I thought they were finches, but the flock was huge and the sound was not something I am familiar with. Then I noticed they were taking turns flying from the top of the maple where they were protected from the wind down to the crabapple trees across the street. A few of them were also drinking from the puddles in the road. (I really hope road salt didn’t cause too much of a problem…) Seen at ground level, I quickly decided they were not finches. They are larger, but not quite as large as a robin. Perhaps about the size of a catbird, but with less tail. They also had black masks around the eyes and a reddish crest.

My first thought was cedar waxwings. After I took a few bad photos and recorded the song on my phone, I went inside to confirm my guess. These birds were definitely waxwings, but they also had rosy undersides and more red on their faces than cedar waxwings. Their chatter was also more bubbly and whistling than that of cedar waxwings. If a sound can be cartoonish, these birds definitely sounded like cartoons, like Mickey Mouse… on speed…

Turns out I came home to a typical flock of bohemian waxwings out on a spring jaunt. This time of year, they gather in huge flocks, up to hundreds of birds though this one was no more than 100, searching out dried berries and other leftover fruits. They will pick a tree bare in minutes before flying on to their next cafe. They also like to flock with robins. So if you see a large flock of robins, look for their smaller and sleeker cousins, the waxwings. I have never seen even one waxwing in the wild, not of any kind. I was sort of convinced that waxwings were a myth. So this was an exciting treat, to be sure. Brightened up my whole evening! (Though I still took a rather high dose of anti-inflammatories with dinner…)

So this is the Greenleaf Moon, albeit without green leaves. Even though the animals are stirring — because this is the right time of year for that! — there is still nothing happening in the green world right now. And without that first flush of green, it just doesn’t feel like spring. I suspect this will be another one of those years where we go straight from winter coats and constant furnace use to instant “please make the heat go away!”. The trees will be bare one week and fully leafed out the next, with barely any time to enjoy the opening of buds and the unfurling of delicate pale green.

We will also probably have flooding in June or July when all this snow — the second highest snowpack in recorded history at the Mount Mansfield weather observatory — finally does melt. The waterways are already angry with precipitation and meltwater from the lower elevations. Hillside creeks are raging torrents; and the Winooski River, normally a staid and fairly shallow stream, looks capable of carrying locomotives. I’m pretty sure there are already collapsed barns and disconsolate cows floating along in the flotsam.

But it is the full Greenleaf Moon, whatever the weather we got… So here are a couple poems that go with the season as it is this year. Not quite tales, but close enough…

the old river god huffed
    shook off ice floes
    riffling and churning in irritation
        pique and petulance
  these pestilential spring torrents
    think they know everything
always
    rush rush rush
    hurry hurry hurry
        no respect for the journey
  but head-long dash to the bottom
never stopping to ask directions
    suss out the news from crows and kingfishers
  no time for meanders
    oxbows rank with singing frogs and duck weed
  no appreciation for
    dancing sunbeams
    pregnant clouds
    whispering reeds
and no respect at all for traditional paths and bounds

slow down
    he thinks
  wouldn’t hurt to seep into the soil
  chat with rootlet and mycelia
  go make a tree
    or sail into the skies
but leave me be between well-worn banks
    flowing summer stately and serene
  was i ever that rash
    he thinks
  youth is wasted
and i’m too old for drama

because it’s not about the cold dark destination
it’s about enjoying this living time

©Elizabeth Anker 2025