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Despite the weather, spring is on the way

After a harsh winter, Ontarians are ready for a season of renewal

I know spring is coming!

When I got up this morning, it was dismal and dreary out. I sat down at my computer to finish this column and it started to snow, not a light sprinkling of flakes but a good, hardy, ground-covering layer blizzard. The vernal season is taking a bit of a sabbatical today, so I had to make a few necessary changes to my approach from spring is here to spring is coming.

Despite the weather, spring is on the way Back to video

I know it’s coming. Nancy at the Tillsonburg Seniors Centre saw a robin a week or so ago, and Sue had laundry out on the line. There is absolutely no better indication that spring will be here soon. We have survived a long, cold, snowy winter and everyone is so ready to enjoy warm spring breezes.

I know this time of year brings with it a ton of work. My yard is a mess and so are my gardens, but all will begin to grow soon enough. We have already enjoyed snowdrops and crocuses and the hyacinths, and maybe even tulips and daffodils will emerging.

Nature can take care of itself. Take a walk in the woods among the trilliums, wood anemone, wild cranesbill, blue bells or hepatica. After a harsh winter, the grass always turns green and begins to grow. Those bare tree branches will leaf out soon. I think nature thrives in spite of us. Everything grows if it is meant to be, if it has happy feet, and gets the right amount of sun and rain, or it dies making room for something new to spring up in its place.

Mother Nature supplies the earth with the required fertilizer needed to keep it healthy by naturally composting and breaking down dead, decaying plants and animals releasing necessary chemicals into the soil. Certain plants are designed to change otherwise unusable chemicals into those required by other plants.

Animals, birds and bats do their best to feed the earth through their droppings as they move from one spot to another. Bugs and worms eat soil and decaying matter, eliminating nutrients and aerating the soil.

Needed minerals are created as freezing and erosion break down of rocks. Acids, produced by plants and fungi, deliquesce these minerals making them usable to plants.

Lightning, dust and snow help bring essential nutrients from the atmosphere to the ground, and when a river or stream floods, it leaves behind all kinds of good stuff to the flooded lands. An occasional good drink through rain and snow sustains everything that lives on and in the soil.

Much of what we do through landscaping, digging, altering, designing and introducing non-natural species of plants and trees, though beautiful to our eyes, upsets the balance of nature and may cause damage, which we, in turn, need to artificially correct to make it all work.

We all love the idea of walking through the gently swaying grasses of an open meadow picking wildflowers. I would love to create that in my yard but I was told to do that I needed to remove all the grass and plant native species, which sounds like a whole lot of work and expense.

My sister, at one point, had what she called a naturalist living next door. We scoffed because we knew he just didn’t cut his grass or maintain his yard. Do you think my neighbours would just call me a naturalist?

I think many of us would like to do that but we are too programmed to show our best to the world and keeping up.

twocentsworth40@gmail.com

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