Early in the afternoon of March 26, I drove through Lancaster County, Pennsylvania's farmland to enjoy the lovely, greening scenery on a sunny, pleasant day. And everything I experienced that lovely afternoon was beautiful and represented spring.
Many cropland roadsides were pretty with the lush, green shoots of grass and garlic, and the colorful, innumerable blooms of Veronicas, purple dead nettles and dandelions, like scattered flower gardens. Those three flowering species are aliens from Europe. They long ago adapted to disturbed soil in cropland and have provided roadside beauties where, otherwise, there may not be any. These plants have blooms on short stems because they adapted to regular cutting in Europe and America. And because of their adjustments and hardiness, the flowers they produce early in spring brighten and beautify roadsides with color, life and cheer.
Veronicas have small, pale-blue blooms in patches of thousands, which makes them quite visible along roadsides, and in lawns and fields. The light-blue flowers of this species dominate sections of certain lawns late in March and into much of April, making those areas light-blue instead of green.
Roadside patches of purple dead nettles, which are a member of the mint family, have millions of tiny, pink blossoms. And the flowers of this species are so numerous in farmland that acres and acres of certain fields are pink with this plant's blossoms during the latter part of March and into April, until the fields get plowed.
And the edible dandelions produce cheery, yellow flowers in abundance along roadsides, and in lawns and fields. Being an inch across, the blooms of this plant are much larger than those of Veronicas and nettles. Seed-eating, small birds eat the seeds of dandelions during May.
That afternoon, I made three stops in natural places where I have visited before over the years. I stopped at a stretch of Mill Creek where a quarter-mile strip of riparian trees, including black walnuts and ash-leafed maples, reed canary-grass and skunk cabbage leaves border one side of the creek and short-grass cow pastures flank the other. There I saw a few pairs each of the waterfowl that will nest along that sheltering section of the creek. Female mallard ducks and Canada geese will hatch young under tall grass on the ground. And hen wood ducks will hatch ducklings in tree hollows and wood duck nest boxes erected for them along the creek.
There were a few other kinds of birds along that same section of Mill Creek that will, eventually, nest there. I saw a pair of eastern bluebirds investigating a bluebird box erected by a farmer. I heard a northern flicker chanting to proclaim nesting territory. I saw and heard a few male red-winged blackbirds singing "konk-ga-reeee" from the twigs of bushes. And I saw a pair each of song sparrows and northern cardinals, both permanent species here, that will rear young in the shrubbery.
At another place along Mill Creek, I saw mixed schools of killifish and blunt-nosed minnows swimming against the current in a little tributary of Mill Creek where they had not been all winter. Both these types of small fish are well adapted to life in running streams and creeks. They are long and lean, streamlined for swimming upstream. And they are both mostly brown, which allows them to blend into the bottom of the waterways, often making them invisible to herons and kingfishers who would eat them if they could see and catch them.
And in a brook tributary to a stream tributary to Mill Creek, I saw another school of blunt-nosed minnows in a deep "hole" in that small waterway, a spot where they had not been all winter. That little brook was beautifully flanked on both sides by lush, green grass and the shiny, yellow blooms of lesser celandines, another kind of alien plant form Europe.
That little trip in Lancaster County farmland was enjoyable and inspiring to me, and represented the vernal season. Readers, too, can get out and enjoy signs of spring close to home. Any day in nature is a health-preserving tonic.
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