Spring is officially on the calendar and sure enough, the first messengers, trilliums, are popping up left and right in the woods. These wondrous little sentinels from the Lily family grow from rhysomes, have three furled leaves, a short stalk and, in these parts, mostly white flowers.

Before the flowers unfold, the shoots are easily overlooked, and I worry when Hundchen does his exuberant run in the woods that things get trampled – just like the damage done to the wildflowers by the tree cutter in Frost’s poem below.

Frost’s protagonist goes to the woods to collect birch boughs for a trellis for his peas.

As much as he is in favor of utilizing what nature has to offer, he also cares about the damage done – the axed stumps are bleeding and the wildflowers might be crushed by all the debris on top of them – go, clean up the mess! In fact, it might be too late for the trilliums, having been “crooked” by man’s arboreal harvest. I assume that means sort of crushed.

Somehow, though, nature seems to prevail. That last line reminds of the inevitability of growth, even if damage awaits. They just push through, next after next.

That certainly seems to be the case in the woods here, still bruised from the recent storms, windfall wherever you look. The little stars dot the landscape – affirmation of resilience, or nature doing its thing, unperturbed, you choose.

Pea Brush 

Robert Frost – 1874-1963

I walked down alone Sunday after church
   To the place where John has been cutting trees
To see for myself about the birch
   He said I could have to bush my peas.

The sun in the new-cut narrow gap
   Was hot enough for the first of May,
And stifling hot with the odor of sap
   From stumps still bleeding their life away.

The frogs that were peeping a thousand shrill
   Wherever the ground was low and wet,
The minute they heard my step went still
   To watch me and see what I came to get.

Birch boughs enough piled everywhere!—
   All fresh and sound from the recent axe.
Time someone came with cart and pair
   And got them off the wild flower’s backs.

They might be good for garden things
   To curl a little finger round,
The same as you seize cat’s-cradle strings,
   And lift themselves up off the ground.

Small good to anything growing wild,
   They were crooking many a trillium
That had budded before the boughs were piled
   And since it was coming up had to come.
 

Here is some music that captures the sparseness of the woods and the still cool light in March, reflected off the white petals of the Trillium.

Photographs mostly from archives, a few from this week, 4 legged creature included.