Northwood News ♦ April 2005

President’s Message

By Carole Barth

Spring Things

What’s your favorite sign of spring?  Is it watching for the first robin?  Maybe it’s listening for the frog chorus—quacking leopard frogs or sweet chiming spring peepers.  Or maybe you look for the first skunk cabbage flower bravely pushing its way up through the frozen ground.

Of course, not all harbingers of spring are benign.  Every year I dread seeing the bright yellow blossoms of the lesser celandine.  An invasive plant that carpets more and more of our stream valleys, lesser celandine replaces the varied symphony of the native spring wildflowers with a single brash color note.  (For a fact sheet, go to www.nps.gov/im/cupn/invasive-species.htm or www.nps.gov/subjects/invasive.  For more information on invasives in general, see www.nationalgeographic.org.)  If you’re allergic to tree pollen like I am, you also suffer as each wind-pollinated variety goes about its reproductive cycle.

But even as some trees are making me sneeze, cry, and wheeze, other trees are boosting my spirits.  No matter how bleak and cold the landscape seems, tree buds enact spring’s unfolding in miniature.  I love seeing how the buds swell, how the scales gradually pull apart, and how the whole structure unfurls in slow motion until the blossoms burst forth like fireworks.  I especially like to watch the shad bush.  I know that when it blooms, the shad will be running upstream and the first spring dinner of shad roe will be on its way.

So celebrate spring and the turning of the year.  While you’re at it, join us for some spring cleaning of Lockridge Creek (see article).  And, if you’re wondering what to do with your excess stuff after you clean house, come to the April association meeting.  A representative from the County Department of Public Works and Transportation is coming to answer all of your questions about recycling and trash services.

[Note:  The links appearing in the printed article are no longer active and have been updated here.]   ■