The mayapples in the vinca under the pines have bloomed. They bloom only one white six-petaled flower in the crotch of their stem, practically unnoticed under the umbrella of their lobed leaf. But from this sole flower comes a sole fruit, a mayapple, though I don't think it's really edible. You'll just have to wait till the fall to get your apples.
There's a lot that's been done and there's a lot more left to do. I've sunk a few potted plants that survived the winter—gardenias and clematises—and I've finally given our forest floor—ahem—yard a mow, sending all the leaf litter and dried-up moss gathered over the fall and winter into the treeline. If I had one of those long tree-trimming saws, I'd give the ash maple and tulip tree alongside our driveway both a sawing up the bough, otherwise the aphids will be pooping tulip tree sap all over our windshields in a freckling of sticky beads. But before that can happen, the dogwoods have to drop their white and pink petals and the stiltgrass, still only in seedling phase, has to grow up and thicken and turn our yard—got it right this time—into a fuzzy, thick, sneaker-toe-soaking green (plus there's moss down there underneath that, somewhere). Then there will be the endless mowing of it all, and the weeding's not too far off, either.
In the meantime, I'm looking forward to the hummingbirds returning in another week or two, if they remain on schedule. Some birds, such as the cardinal, chickadees and pileated woodpecker, never leave these woods. But others do, and when they come back, you never really know if it's the same you saw before. The columbine and alliums and lilies are up and growing as fast as they can; I'm looking forward to their blooms and those of our rhododendron, too.
The spring rains have arrived and the ground and air are wet throughout the day and throughout the night. The vibrancy of the green outside our freshly-polished windows is almost unbelievable. I find myself just sitting in the room and looking out at the view and feeling that unutterable greenness, the image of it, shifting in the breeze, tattooing itself to the inside of my skull, for it doesn't last, not this wet lusciousness of the leaves newborn in spring, not once they harden into their summer ripeness and take on a less fragile, more robust green, one tough enough for the long weeks of an August fast.
Inside the house, there is a baby and a tooth has burgeoned out of his gumline almost in sync with the burgeoning of the leaves out of the woody stems of the trees. And as spring bounces into life, so the baby has gone through a growth spurt and I swear he's 10 pounds heavier and 10 inches longer in a matter of weeks (not quite that explosive a growth, it just feels that way). He's cruising across the edges of the furniture, eating more, babbling more, getting closer and closer to saying "mama" and "dada", and crawling and yelping all over the place like the little floor puppy he is. I think of all the things I have to say to him and all of the things he will have to say.
And I forget there's even a pandemic going on, what with all there is happening here and now, right under my nose, all of the life and growth and movement and turning of the weather and the season. It's a rare year I get to spend just watching the screen of trees and shrubs about our yard—the redbuds and maples, the sycamore and the empress, the locus and honeysuckle, the mulberries and oaks—each thicken and thicken with each passing day, counting each pop of each leaf, re-hiding our moss-roofed home, making everything secret once again, behind a shield of green.
The sun remains longer in the sky. I'm not sure we see much of anyone just passing by, up here on the mountain. Only the sun. Only the moon's face peeking in the window at night. The odd car driving by.
It's like the world beyond has become a place you only dip into, and that sparingly, only for essentials. Our world has instead become defined by the limits of the yard, a thickening screen of green, the number of holesd bore by the carpenter bees in the porch siding, the number of eggs each chicken has popped out this day, when the woodpecker knocks on the side of the house in the morning, or when the beetle scurries across the floor at night, because they're nocturnal. I know I'll count each orange spider and each meter-wide web when they make their debut, in only a few short weeks. And that will be what's happening. Pandemic? Hmph. You wouldn't know it from the vantage on the porch, or by the sound of the wind in the canopy, or in the look of a poplar leaf winking against the sky.
And that's all from the mountain this perhaps week.