Last year I transplanted a patch of wild pansies from an elderly neighbor’s yard, one of the few nearby that isn’t treated with poisons, but so far I have seen no sign of them here this year, although they are already blooming profusely in hers. I’ll try again to transplant a clump, preparing for the day when her house, too, falls to developers, the lot scraped one end to the other.
Most newly emerged native bees are generalists, happy to make use of any native flower at hand, but some are specialists, able to feed on only one flower or flower group. Spring beauty mining bees, for instance, can feed only on the pink pollen of spring beauties. The host plants of a different mining bee, Andrena violae, are wild violets. When specialist bees emerge in springtime to a yard that’s been scorched and cleared of weedy flowers, the yard’s whole population will die out.
Lately, giant yellow and brown centipedes have been crawling out of the leaf litter. After a rain, for reasons that escape my understanding, they like to walk around in the damp street — easy pickings for the crows that come searching for soft grasses for their nest. Last week brought near-daily rains, and twice I stooped to admire a millipede in the street and then watched a crow grab it and carry it up to a tree branch the moment I stood and walked away. Crows know the dangers of the street even if millipedes do not.
And the songbirds know the danger of crows. Knowing that crows will rob their nests to feed their own babies, the other birds keep quiet when crows are in the yard. Otherwise it’s an endless chorus, not just at dawn but all day long. Birdy birdy birdy birdy, cheer cheer cheer, sings the redbird. C’mere c’mere, c’mere, come! calls the Carolina wren. Yes, yes, heeeeeeeeeeeeere. Yes, yes, heeeeeeeeere, sings the song sparrow. Fee bee fee bay, fee bee fee bay, sings the Carolina chickadee. Singing and singing and singing — the whole day long, it’s blooming wildflowers and cool rains and singing and singing and singing.
I listen to them while I kneel to peer into the spring beauties, looking for a tiny bee dusted with pink pollen, and I think of one of my favorite lines from E.B. White: “Notes on springtime and on anything else that comes to mind of an intoxicating nature.” What else is there to write about in springtime but anything that comes to mind of an intoxicating nature? It’s been a dark winter of worries, but the wildflowers are blooming and the birds are singing again. It feels like coming home.