The Daily: 21 April 2025

We flirted briefly with temperatures above 60°F on Saturday, though it also rained the entire day with gusty winds from every direction, making it not entirely pleasant garden weather. Sunday was dry but much cooler, never topping 50° though it was sunny in the afternoon. Unfortunately, it was also even more windy, the kind of weather where you set down your garden tools and they blow away. I did not spend much time out there, though it really could do with a clean up. The perennials are starting to send up new growth and I haven’t cut back last years desiccated stalks yet. The roses have tiny mouse-ear leaves, but I still need to prune the dead canes. And I never got done with the raspberry trimming. Because I hate that job. There is no way to cut back raspberries without being thoroughly rasped. So I procrastinate on that one, and some years I just don’t get it done before summer. Which, despite the temperature, is just around the corner now. It’s the last week of the Greenleaf Moon!

There are still no green leaves. However, the trees are starting to consider waking up. There is a faint wash of rusty rose on the mountains, indicating that the maples are budding. The lilacs are tipped in tiny green cones that will erupt into blossoms some day soon. The birches have catkins dangling from bare branches. River birch forms nubs in the late autumn which slowly mature over winter, so that the catkins are ripe by late spring. Reportedly, these are edible, as all the poplar family catkins are. I’ve never tried them, but I’ve heard the young green catkins taste something like the minty-sweet syrup birches produce. The mature seeds taste like seeds. But dried and ground, they make a delicious flour, adding a complex sweet-nutty taste to baked goods. I’ve heard that ground catkins from alder, cousin to the birches, taste indistinguishable from cornmeal.

There are other signs that it is spring. In the garden, the yellow daffodils are blooming along with bright blue squill and lavender-blue chionodoxa. Muscari is coming up in the asparagus bed, and the asparagus are starting to shoot. Have to keep an eye on that. They can go from thumb-sized nubs to four foot stalks seemingly overnight… and then you miss the one and only shot at fresh asparagus all year. The forsythia finally decided to wake up and deck itself in sunshine yellow. And… the groundhog is ravaging the hostas. Not that I particularly mind. Who decided that hostas were so fantastic that we must plant them in every shady bed? They’re a nuisance, impossible to keep neat, rampant spreaders, favorite food of deer and rabbits and myriad insects. And apparently my resident groundhog now also. I’ve never had one eat the hostas before. Guess there just isn’t enough normal groundhog fare out there. It’s hosta or toxic bulbs.

On my lunch walk the other day I encountered more solid evidence that spring is here. First there was coltsfoot in all the ditches. This cheery little flower looks quite like a short, leafless yellow daisy. It can grow in the harshest conditions, like roadside ditches caustic with road salt and decidedly lacking in soil. It jumps out of the ground as soon as the temperatures are mostly above freezing. At first there are no leaves. Short stalks are topped with a golden flower that quickly matures into a whirl of dandelion-like seeds. Then the flower stalk dies back and unremarkable leaves follow. At this stage the plant is spreading its underground rhizomes in all directions. In the fall, buds form on the rhizomes. These will overwinter, buried under mounds of snow, and, come March or April, they’ll jump back out of the ground again, bringing springtide cheer to a lunchtime stroll.

There was also a bit of a disturbance in the goat barn across the street from where I work. I might have thought the goats were getting rained on, so loud was the shrieking. I didn’t pay much attention though. Goats will be loud some days, even when there is no rain. However, on the way back down the hill, I could see into the pen on the backside of the barn. And what was there? Baby goats! There is nothing cuter than a half dozen goat babies exploring the outside world for the first time. All the mamas were vociferously telling the tikes how to behave properly, and all the infants were ignoring all directives and cavorting about as only baby goats can cavort. And the whole lot of them were yelling at the top of their voices. It was adorable!

But the definitive sign that spring is upon us — though without green leaves — was a high whistling squeal from the damp woods. Spring peepers! In full voice! If it’s time for froggy love songs, then spring has undoubtedly arrived.

The days are certainly lengthened. Last Friday, the sun rose before 6am. This is a marker for me. It means that there is at least a pale twilight when I wake up, and I don’t need to turn on the lights to make my morning tea. There is also a psychological element to it. Somehow, starting the day in the five o’clock hour seems like summer. Significantly, it never starts in the four o’clock hour here in central Vermont. This is as early as sunrise gets.

Then on the other end of the day, the sun is well up until 7:40pm, with dusk lasting until nearly 9pm. It’s light enough to be outside for a couple hours after I get home from work. I’ve had time to go hiking in the evening. The well in the wood is particularly lovely this time of year.

All that evidence and yet… it is still too cold to do much in the garden. I can’t even remove the row cover for fear of losing carrots to the freeze — after they’ve lived all through the winter, no less! The garlic is up and there are herbs in the mound, but the peas refuse to germinate because it keeps dipping down into the 20s. And there are no radishes. Yet. No doubt they’ll all sprout right when I’ve given up and planted something else in there. My basement garden is coming along nicely, though I got the electric bill for the indoor garden season and decided that was quite enough… I need to move the brassicas outside, but the weather forecast is saying that’s a bad idea. We might see more days above 60° this week, but we’re also going to see several nights of frost. Brassicas can withstand a light freeze when they are older, but not as seedlings with barely two true leaves. So, they’re in the basement for at least another week. I have turned off the heat mats though. Now that everything has germinated, I figure the plants can deal with ambient basement.

Yesterday was Easter, so that means Lent is over. My lenten media fast was restful. Unfortunately, the news from the loony bin is so very outrageous that it is impossible to ignore it completely. Even with the much reduced screen time, there has been too much time staring, slack-jawed at a headline, trying to reconcile what is reported, what is apparently actually happening, with what I used to know of reality… This is cognitive dissonance made painfully palpable. However, the screen does have an off-switch, and I’ve been exercising my right to use it liberally. I’ve been doing other things. Cooking and cleaning and so on. But also, I made a few pillow covers for the window seat (where throw pillows serve as festive insulation). I found some William Morris floral jacquard. It’s appropriately bright over there now. There has also been much poetry written. In fact, I’ll be joining a slew of other Vermont poets next Tuesday for a reading. So that’s sort of exciting.

Today is Easter Monday, a traditional day of fairs and festivities. It is a holiday in most European countries. Not here though. So I have to content myself with the daylight on either end of the work day. Probably just as well… the forecast is for 40°F and rain… again…

Here are some more evening hike photos… just because…

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This is peak season for the Lyrid meteor shower. This patch of space gunk was left behind by Comet Thatcher. For whatever reason, it regularly ignites into fireballs. You stand a very good chance of seeing at least one in the two hours before dawn. The peak morning is Tuesday the 22nd. A modest shower, the peak is only about 10-15 per hour, but those fireballs are worth the wait. Look to the south, and get your wishes ready. And then, because you’re not going back to bed at 4:30am, turn to the northeast and watch the sun rise. A carafe of hot tea is probably essential viewing equipment.

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©Elizabeth Anker 2025