Robins and white-breasted nuthatches are calling as I arrive. Along the trail, in the soil, the worms have left bouquets of leaves they stuffed down into their holes like greedy little Santa Clauses. I pull one out, and the leaves are skeletonized, the flesh digested and the veins ragged, stunned.
Honeysuckle buds are swelling but not yet open, fuzzy and elongate. (I think it’s probably all Lonicera maackii along this trail.) Sedges of all colors and creeds are sending up shoots. Spring beauty leaves are darkening and hardening up, winding upward through the leaves like charmed snakes. False mermaid seedlings are beginning to get a little rowdy in the gaps in the leaf litter. The lower nodes have become visible on the taller plants; any day now the plants will put on lateral leaves, and flower buds will emerge on short, arching stalks, closed, tough as nails. Then the flowers will open, the seeds will set, and the mother plants will die, more faithful than the faithful, leaving their seeds to float off into the future, each a Moses alone in the bulrushes.
Garlic mustard shoots that got missed last year are ganging up, wrinkled and dark, tough, a little self-satisfied. They’re not demons, I know, but I don’t like them. I saw a slope in southwestern Wisconsin once many years ago that was solid garlic mustard with a couple of Solomon’s seals poking up. On one hand, I want to say, “good for you. You’re just doing what you were born to do.” On the other hand: so many interesting species snuffed out beneath them. I pull the shoots I see on my walk today, lay them on their sides up high enough that they’ll desiccate before their roots can find their way back to the soil. I know objectively that this is a blip: give them 100,000 years, maybe a million–no time at all, in other words–and they’ll just be a part of whatever becomes of the eastern North American forests. Still, I pull them out and set them aside so I know they’ll die, and I feel that small sense of accomplishment you have when you find the match to a mismatched sock or you dunk a can in the recycling bin on the way out of the house. You go on with your day. Nothing wrong with weeding, I suppose, but I don’t care much for my attitude.
On the walk out, I take a minute to watch from the bridge at where St. Joseph Creek has spilled over the floodplain, sweeping away the leaves to the base of the hill, scouring the soil, lodging stems and leaves against the tree trunks. The water is still turbid and running fast.
A tufted titmouse and cardinal call. It’s 1:42. Virginia bluebells are coming up glaucous along the edge of the trail. I walk home, recalling that our garlic is several inches tall at home and looking good.
We too have garlic mustard, and pull out the shoots as we see them. Of note, though is that in areas of our woods not policed, the g.m. is greatly thinned out. Maybe soil factors, pathogens, but certainly not deer predation. I wish.
Good news that you’re getting it taken care of!
What a beautiful post! Such lovely writing, and careful observations. Thank you for taking us with you on your walk. –Cindy 🙂
Thank you, Cindy! Happy spring!