IT’SSPRINGIT’SSPRINGIT’SSPRING!!!

It’s SPRIIIIIIIINNNNGGGGG!!!!!

Okay, maybe it’s not quite spring officially–still another five days before the vernal equinox–but when I see skunk cabbages blooming in the swamps, then as far as I’m concerned, spring has arrived. Everything else is just a formality.

With its odd-looking purple cowl shielding a flower spathe within, the skunk cabbage is nothing you’d want to put in a pot on the windowsill, but it’s nevertheless one of my favorite wildflowers. It’s a quirky little plant with plenty of character, plucky enough to lead the procession of the spring wildflowers in Michigan.

I came upon the one above while hiking a wetland trail in Yankee Springs the other day. The afternoon was beautiful, a bit chilly but on the leading edge of a warming trend that will put the temperatures into the fifties by today and as high as sixty degrees by Tuesday.

On a broad, blue day filled with the promise of warmer seasons to come, even last year’s vanishing remnants were transfigured by the sun. A bough of old beech leaves hung like Japanese lanterns in a shaft of sunlight.

Of course “the kids”–my collection of carnivorous plants–are out on the deck. I removed them from the refrigerator three weeks ago to boot them out of hibernation, and they have responded with a vigorous rush of flowers and leaves. The Venus flytraps are now open for business, and the Sarracenia oreophila isn’t far behind, with an exuberant array of young traps already ten inches tall and nearing the point when they’ll pop open.

White mold wiped out most of my flytrap seedlings during the winter, but a good hundred or so have survived. It’ll be interesting to see how much they increase in size this growing season.

All that to say…YAHOO!!! It’s SPRIIINNNGGG!!! Maybe not by the calendar, not quite yet, but don’t tell that to the robins because they don’t care, and neither do I. Just take a walk in the woods and you’ll know. Spring is here at last.