E is for Emerging

10 am on March 2, I went out into the cold, dreary yard to see if I could find little hints of green, little harbingers of Emerging spring.

In this picture the small area of lawn that we have is on the left, in front of the creek. It is dormant and brown.

The unmowed acreage is on the far side of the creek. The trees are bare. The landscape is almost totally without any pretty colors.

We live on a wooded five acres. The oaks shed their leaves after it's too cold to rake so the leaves don't get cleaned up until spring.

I needed to push oak leaves aside in order to check for Emerging greenery.

There are naturalized daffodils scattered here, there, and everywhere. They are the hardest and most dependable sign that spring is actually going to happen.

They don't let oak leaves stop them from their quest for sunlight. The daffodil leaves are strong enough to chop right through the dead leaves and keep on growing.


In an almost sunny part of the yard, the daylilies are Emerging.

They are anemic looking from being hidden under the oak leaves. The next mild day we have, I'll get the rake out and uncover the shoots so they can get some sun.

There is snow forecast for this afternoon. For today, the daylilies are probably happiest buried out of the weather.


I never would have thought to look for sedum in early March until Kim in the mountains of New Hamshire showed her sedum heads poking out of the earth.

Shoving a few oak leaves aside (do you see a pattern here?), there they are! Little sedum plants Emerging from the frozen ground. They don't bloom until August, so they're really getting a head start on the season.