A Wonderful Sign of the Spring Growing Season--the New Growth on My Spruce Trees

The early spring wildflowers are beginning to fade, but we have another wonderful sign of the spring growing season--the new growth on the spruce trees. The color is the freshest green or blue. The feel is soft. I love it!

Magnificent Blue Spruce; Norway Spruce seedling in foreground

Norway Spruce seedling in my front yard

Mid May Flowers in My Yard

Blueberries--lots of blooms!

Still daffodils on May 17th!

Lilacs

Lilies of the Valley

My forsythia didn't bloom this spring (after the bitter-cold winter). But the blueberries are doing fine and the lilacs seem pretty good. My lilies of the valley are doing very well and smell wonderful. I love the smell of spring!

Poem for a Spring Night

unexpected grace

mid spring evening, on my porch,

sitting in the dusk in a gentle rain,

robin singing from the red maple,

cardinals calling tree to tree to tree,

spring peepers and other frogs and toads

harmonizing near the brook--

i read a bit from my book

then pick up my guitar

pluck out “Simple Gifts”

the troubles of the world can't be heard

with this wonderful cacophony of birdsong,

peepers, and the patter of rain--

and i, we,

so quietly happy this night

[Bob Coughlin / May 12, 2014]

Daffodils This Late in May? Yes, in Chardon and Hambden!

My daffodils are still doing fine! Full spectacular bloom:

Daffodils on May 8th, Chardon/Hambden Townships

Very pretty dandelions (wonder what the neighbors think!)

Wildflower Season in Chardon! Trillium Time!

Trillium Time in Big Creek Park, Chardon Township:

Large-Flowered Trillium at Big Creek

Red Trillium (also called Erect Trillium, Wake Robin, or Stinking Benjamin!)

Trout Lilly

Cutleaf Toothwort

Fern fiddleheads

Marsh Marigold, Booth Road, Kirtland Hills

Easter Flowers

What a beautiful Easter! Warm temperatures, greening grass, daffodils galore. Visits with Karla and Andres Quintero; dinner with Julia, Ed, Colin, and Robby. Children's choir at St. Mary's in Painesville. Mary Ann Ratchko-Gamez playing her flute and whistle; Francesco Binda on piano.

From my garden

Linda, Karla, and Andres at St. Mary's

Me with Linda and Robby

We Know This Drill! Snow in April. A Fine Denise Levertov Poem

Sunday it was 79 degrees and we walked around Holden Arboretum au naturel looking at all the spectacular spring flowers (well, part of that sentence is not 100% accurate). This morning it is 29 and snowing, with a few inches expected. We know this drill well in Northeast Ohio. Was it around 2008 when we had 4 feet of snow in April in Hambden Township, outside Chardon (around 2 feet around April 8th; another 2 feet around April 24th)? Of course that was after I had put my snowblower away for the season. My neighbor Bud came to my rescue with his front-end loader. There was no way to shovel that wet, heavy snow off my 100-foot-long driveway. Thanks Bud! So we know the drill. Yet every year we are surprised.

Somewhere in the early 1970's, 1973 or '74, Denise Levertov spent some time at the University of Cincinnati teaching poetry and holding workshops. I'm pretty sure that an old friend, Sarah Cotterill, was in those workshops and was influenced by Denise Levertov. I haven't seen Sarah since the summer of 1976. She was driving through Iowa and I was working at the Catholic Worker House in Davenport. Sarah and I had dinner at a restaurant in the Amana Colonies (a former utopian community). Anyway, I lost track of her and have only seen a bit of her poetry since then.

Somehow Sarah or someone else from the University of Cincinnati gave me a poem Levertov wrote that spring 40 years ago in Ohio. Here it is:

April in Ohio

By Denise Levertov

Each day
the cardinals call and call in the rain,
each cadence scarlet
among leafless buckeye.

and passionately
the redbuds that can’t wait
like other blossoms, to flower
from fingertip twigs,
break forth.

as Eve from Adam’s
cage of ribs,
straight from amazed treetrunks.

Lumps of snow
are melting in tulip-cups. 

Spring Peepers Peeping! An X-Rated Spring Song

A very very short video in which you can hear the wonderful song of spring nights--the mating song of the spring peepers (just outside my door):

Here is a link to the Wikipedia article on these critters: Spring Peepers

Here's what those little buggers look like:

Peeper Peeping--Looking for Love

This was found on a Google image search

Early April Hallelujah Chorus

The spring peepers singing their hearts out last night

Right outside my window, in the wetlands, near the creek,

Chirping their love

Seeking out their Romeos and Juliets

Reckless frog lovers

One green inch of high C

Chanting to the drumbeat

Pulsing in their peeper souls

The hum in the blood,

The need for a mate

Louder than the call for food or sleep

Or anything else --

Not so different from

Human peepers of spring!

[Robert M. Coughlin / April 2002]

What Chardon Looks Like on March 22, 2013

This is what the early-spring lake-effect snow has brought to Chardon and Hambden Township:

Looking out the front door. Hambden Township, Ohio. 22 March 2013.

Penniman Drive backyard, Hambden Township, Ohio, 22 March 2013

Snow on the deck, Hambden Township, Ohio, 22 March 2013