Our strange spring streams forward in the strangest way. What can we say? What can we do, but ride along?
I’ve been checking my two surest morel spots daily for 10 days without seeing a one.
Then last evening, Karl Scherer sent the photo above and this note:
My first morel this year found me. This was because it came from a place I’ve never seen them before. Right under my nose in my back yard in Jefferson Park. Casually raking spring debris from my flower beds I saw this little guy come tumbling from under my rake. Though I’ve never seen even one on my property in over 20 years you can be sure every inch of the garden/yard gets a closer look before the next time a rake comes off the garage wall. Or could my wife be an astute morel hunter herself with an extremely strong code of silence and stealth. My wife will surely know something is up when I beat her to the garden every time for the next several weeks. But if I found out she’s been holding out on me…..
Apparently I should be letting morels come to me, rather than seeking them.
It sounds like some sort of life principle.
We are so bone dry I am not surprised to have not found any morels yet. The ground is so dry it is cracking in many spots. Sounds like we are to get significant rain later in the week, so we shall see.
Our odd spring lurched a step forward for me on Saturday when I spotted the first goslings of the year on our town pond while doing the morning ramble with Lady, our family mutt.
That is about a week behind normal. If you remember the wild spring of the drought year in 2012, when we had a long streak of 80s in March, gosling arrived in early April that year.
Sunday, a second set of goslings came. A third set came yesterday. We usually have seven pairs nesting around the two old clay pits, so I am curious what we will see this morning.
On Sunday, I was with our two youngest kids for a wild flower hike at their camp open house at Camp Shaw-Waw-Nas-See along Rock Creek, just outside of Kankakee River State Park.
And behold, there was a mayapple just poking through. My memory is not as sharp on when mayapples start, but I think that is about two weeks behind.Trees started budding, at some of them, last week. Though our dogwood in our front yard has not. Our neighbor’s maple is nearly to the leafing-out stage.On a whim Sunday morning, I thought I would take shot and checked for wild asparagus at three of my surest spots. Not a single stalk.More worrisome is that the ditches, which normally require me to step carefully or jump across this time of year are so dry they were not even mushy. Some rain might help spark the asparagus, too.We shall see.By the sounds of the reports from fishermen yesterday, sounds like fish are moving toward doing what needs being done.Get out and enjoy the next couple days. Change thrashes in, finally.
