Spring Has Sprung

  The clock has moved forward an hour and I expect to catch up next month.  The moon has reached its lowest point on the meridian. St. Patrick's day when all is painted green has been celebrated with enthusiasm and passed away.
   The season after a very mild winter with little snow in our part of the world surprised us with a cold snap burning many early blooming trees making us wonder how much damage the summer fruit crop sustained. Today it's bright and sunny with spots of bright yellow dotting the landscape from hardy daffodils and yellow forsythia that bear tinges of scald in their blooms.
   The first day of spring officially arrived in the Central Time Zone  on March 20th at 5:36 am when night and day were of equal length. Both scientists and soothsayers proclaim to be knowledgeable as to what the future portends. I find looking out the window works most of the time.
   We live in an ever changing cycle of seasons that have more relation to the sun, jet stream, and prevailing winds than they do to artificial calendars devised by human beings. Year after year it's a hit and miss, but though we complain we choose not to live where there are few seasons.
   Our ancestors didn't need a billboard reminding them to eat their vegetables especially the green leafy kind. One of the first signs of spring was when the woman of the family  began to haunt fields, ditches, and hollows bearing a sharp paring knife to harvest the emerging spring greens.
   I'm not sure what food value, if any, remained after being simmered with a piece of side meat all day on the back of the range. What emerged was a shinny dark soggy glob that was carefully parceled out so each family member would have a small taste of spring. The best part was the pot liqueur that was served in a small pitcher to be poured over a slab of hot buttered cornbread like syrup.
   This was not my mother's style of cooking, but my father's mother who was born in 1883. I learned to cook from both of them. There are many foods they created with ease that I've tried to duplicate my entire adult life and have yet to managed a reasonable facsimile. With Nash it's the same thing - his father made mush that was sliced and fried crisp. I can't count the times he has tried to recreate the procedure and failed.
   Once my sister tried to prepare Gran's green. She went out in the yard and pulled handfuls of what she could find. Plopped her bounty in a skillet to char and fill the house with smoke. Mother rescued her egg skillet and banished her from the kitchen until she could see above the burners without standing on a chair.
   My own search in our early spring woods, at the farm, was for fiddle head ferns. I'd take a small basket lined with a damp towel and the trusty paring knife. Very carefully, I'd harvest a few shoots no bigger than the my little finger from each clump so as not to destroy the plant.
   I'd leave the basket outside until time to prepare this early spring delicacy. They don't last in the refrigerator and one picking per year was all I could manage before they became too well developed.
   A fast dunking in cool water to dislodge any insects that had found a home in the furry stems. Gently pat them dry. Coat a skillet with butter and give them a fast saute. Just get them hot and serve immediately. The taste is light, fresh, and similar to very young asparagus.
   For several years I've transplanted clumps of ferns to shady spots around our yard. Hoping someday to harvest a crop of the spring treat I first learned about when reading a mystery novel set in New England.
   I make no claim to being a woods woman and do my infrequent hunting for fresh greens in the grocery sticking to kale and spinach which have a decent shelf life. We most certainly do not cook vegetables as our grand-mothers or mothers did. At times their methods could be described as 'cooking them to death', but certain foods like spring greens bring memories of a past that wasn't that long ago.

Bells of Spring

   Three bell shaped yellow flowers ring in spring. Daffodils, Clinch Vine, and Yellow Forsythia. I like to think these early bell shaped blossoms are nature's way of helping hummingbirds who thrive on nectar deep in bell shaped flowers on their northbound journey.
   Yellow Bells (forsythia) seem to pop out overnight and shimmer in the sun. They add a special glow to a yard or hillside where a farm house once stood. The bright yellow flowers manage to withstand our sudden spring freezes with amazing vigor. The sturdy bushes with great cascading branches are almost impossible to dig out. To make them flourish thicker than before, as soon after they flower as possible cut the bushes back to about six inches above ground level. New branches must have plenty of time to grow and develop as the bloom buds are set during the summer prior to spring flowering. If the new leaves begin to appear leave then alone for another year before pruning.
   We also have a white forsythia outside our library window on the south facing side of the house. Its blooms are smaller than the yellow. It also blooms much earlier, most often flowers appear in middle of January. This year like the witch hazel it got its seasons mixed up and bloomed in late November. Now it's sending out a few sparse blooms in March.
   Clinch Vine is the rarest of three native Kentucky flowering vines. It's flowers are a deep yellow with red hearts. Within days after you see the blooms high in the trees, fence rows, and bushes hummingbirds appear on their northward migration. We have a few in our maple and oak trees that bloom before the leaves of the trees appear.
   Anywhere you drive yards, ditches, and fields are dotted with the most common early spring bell. The daffodil is a European import that flourishes wherever they are planted; lasting decades after a structure has crumbled to dust. One local farmer tried to rid a cornfield of them. He plowed and harrowed his field, cutting deep into the soil. The next spring he had hundreds more of them bloom among the tender stalks of his new corn crop because cutting up the bulbs increases production of new plants.
   Beautiful they are and have been immortalized in poetry for ages for the vibrant color they bring to spring, yet they have a sinister quality of death. We used this in the opening story, "Don't Go There," of our national award finalist collection of ghost stories, Haints:
   "The night-bleached flower heads lifted their faces to the stars. The clumps bumped across the dark field in random profusion separated by narrow paths where cattle had foraged sweet grass in safety. Every bloom, blade, and bulb is safe from predators because of the poison they contain, but they are lovely to watch as they nod on vagabond currents of air."
   So our farmer's new shoots are safe from a raccoon or rabbit as they have learned the danger lurking across the field. The yellow belled flowers ring in spring more often than weather patterns that vary from soft to fierce.  

Spring Comes to the Cumberland

Spring officially arrived in Ono County on March 20th at 5:45 pm CDST. This is when the sun was directly over the equator on its journey to the Northern Hemisphere. Scientifically it is referred to as the Vernal Equinox.


White Trillium, Blue Flocks, & Violets 

Spring in the Cumberland region is a time when the trees bloom. A time when the lake can be coated with enough pollen to create a yellow sea. The woods become a fairy land with the deep wine of the redbud with an understory of frothy layers of white dogwoods.

The Cumberland Plateau is an east/west range of old mountains that extend across the border of Kentucky and Tennessee. The Cumberland River meanders through the plateau in all directions before it enters the Ohio River moving north from Kentucky. This includes a broad dip through downtown Nashville. It was once the major highway of the region, but is now home to several TVA lakes with great fishing and boating.
Spring is an odd time and the locals who live close to the seasons describe the cold snaps as "winters." We overheard a group of coffee drinkers discussing the various winters and which one caused the most impact as we ate breakfast the other morning.
Redbud or Linen Britches Winter: These are two names that allude to the first cold snap after the flush of early spring. Linen Britches refers to the fact you've been fooled by warm weather and have put away heavy clothing for the coolness of linen.
Dogwood Winter occurs close on the heals of Redbud winter when the dogwoods are in bloom.


Tulips Dusted with Snow

Blackberry Winter is the next progression when the thorny bushes bloom.
Whippoorwill Winter is the last hard cold snap when you can hear his song at the twilight. This bird is heralded as the true harbinger of spring.
Locust Winter occurs when the Black Locust trees are in flower spreading their sweet smell and pollen across the land.


Firewood & Yellow Trillium

Stump Winter is the final round, it is so described because you've burned everything but the stumps from your winter fuel supply.
Each "winter" is milder than the previous and it isn't unusual to find violets and daffodils blooming through the snow. This past winter has been particularly difficult for many Kentuckians so any evidence of an early spring brings delight and joy. It is still a good idea to wait until Locust Winter to set out your tomato plants.
Nash Black would like to thank the late Lester Acree of Jamestown, KY for helping us get the winters in the correct order.