Peepers and early plants say spring is here

In another week, if we have a night with warm rain by then, I’ll be out on a country road helping salamanders and frogs get safely across to their breeding pools.  

There are certain stretches where they concentrate in large numbers, and on the busiest roadways the carnage is really awful. I don’t go to those sites, but I do stake out stretches of road with light traffic where I can do more good and am at less risk of accident myself.  

I expect to see wood frogs and spotted salamanders, both of which are indicators of nearby vernal pool habitat, as well as tree frogs, spring peepers, toads and other frogs that breed in a variety of wetlands. I might get lucky and see one of the rarer blue spotted or Jefferson’s salamanders as well (hopefully not in a squashed condition).

Other species are on the move now that the season is turning.  I’m waiting to hear the first red-winged blackbirds rasping in those same wetlands with the chorusing frogs.  

The bears are restive and I have taken down my bird feeders.  

My neighbors are growing restive too, emerging from their cars and houses to tackle the wreckage of downed limbs and old leaves that accumulated in our yards over the winter. I’m waiting for mud season to end before starting those chores in earnest, but I am gathering brush to extend my wattle fence another 15 feet or so along the back line.

I’ve gathered what I think is my last pail of sap from the backyard maple, and am sugaring off a final quart or so from what turned out to be a long syrup season that started in the beginning of February and came on strong during the last two weeks with near ideal conditions.  

I can see the tips of ramps and trillium poking up through the last of the snow in my shaded wildflower garden, so I’d expect to find them starting to emerge in the woodlands now too.  It will be another few weeks before they blossom, but it is a hopeful sign and one I have been anticipating all winter.

This is a treacherous time to visit garden centers and risk delving too soon in the newly thawed earth.  I yearn for growing things but know that spring is fickle and the soil won’t be warm enough for germination until the season is far advanced.  

Better to sharpen that chainsaw and finish pruning my apple trees. You cannot force what must come in its own time.

Tim Abbott is program director of Housatonic Valley Association’s Litchfield Hills Greenprint. His blog is at www.greensleeves.typepad.com.