Arrivals and departures

March has arrived, February has departed. We waited — sometimes patiently, sometimes not — for March.  Now it’s here, and though we’re still in very early spring, some of our favorite pre-spring flowers, like camelias and crocuses, are already fading. We’re saying goodbye to winter, and we see spring coming.

Now we’re waiting for the woodland oso berry shrubs to bloom, and admiring their new upright fleur-de-lis leaves. We’re taking walks to see if the skunk cabbages are opening their big yellow flowers yet. Not everyone likes their rank smell, which is too brash to call a fragrance.

This phenomenon — the coming and going of every sort of plant life in every week of every season — is the way of the world, and the constant background music of the gardener’s emotional and spiritual life. It might be muse and music for others, too.

In deepest winter, the shifts are so slow they are barely perceptible. The clock ticks slowly. In midsummer, there are a few glorious weeks when it feels like the season will last forever, and maple leaves three times the size of a man’s hand will always be abundant. There’s nothing we enjoy more than that deception. The clock ticks faster, but we prefer not to hear it.

Right now, summer still seems a very long way away. We can still see the sky through bare branches of maple, alder, and cascara. The thickets of willows and blackberry brambles would seem totally lifeless if it weren’t for the birds, who are starting to gather for rehearsals of the spring dawn chorus, and the Pacific chorus frogs. The million, billion frogs are also starting to sing on any night — and often during the day — when it isn’t too cold.

A few days ago, I encountered the skeleton of a leaf plastered onto a fallen log by winter rain. Next to it were other leaf skeletons — alder, willow, and some I couldn’t name — that were also wet and barely visible. All the leafiness between those stems and veins had decayed and washed into the soil, now ready to nourish a new generation of growth.

Observing that leaf-art on a log and speculating about the enriched soil beneath it made me think the time to plant spinach might be near. Maybe the time is already here for gardens with cold frames, greenhouses, or other hurry-up-spring devices that warm the soil a bit and protect seedlings from frost. Maybe this is the year I’ll finally experiment with one.

Or maybe not. I look forward to aiming for the perfect time for spring planting, and then waiting and watching for seeds to sprout. If I plant too early, spinach may struggle to come up in the cold; if I wait too long, warm weather will make it bolt and go to seed rather than growing nice big leaves. Tomatoes and squash planted too early struggle too; but if planted too late they won’t have time to mature before fall. Attention to dates and temperatures and the length of days matters.

Gardeners dance with soil, seeds, plants, weather and sunlight. And together, we dance with time. Now that winter has passed and it’s March, our clock is starting to tick a little louder with every passing day. At this time of the year, birds and frogs tell us what time it is. We’d better listen.