Finding Ulysses

This week is the first that really feels as we imagine all springtime to be – warm, sunny and green. We may still have frost in the morning, but I’m seeing a nice collection of flowers around town, with a lot of spring bulbs, but a few flowering shrubs and understory wildflowers as well. The bloodroot in back of my house has just started blooming, and the may apples and rhubarb are thrusting their thick shoots out of the ground.

Honeysuckle, an intrusive non-native I feel I should dislike, is putting out its leaves, and I can’t say that I’ll be upset when they blossom. The buckeye sapling that we’re allowing to grow around the back of the house is also unfolding its leaves, and the friendly deer seem not to care to nip the buds, though they look quite hearty to me.

All this growth brings to mind tomorrow’s lecture at the library. At 7:30 PM, David Weinstein will speak on the topic Project Budbreak: How Climate Change Affects Native Plants.

“Project Budbreak” is, I believe, Project Budburst, a citizen science project of the sort pioneered by the people up on the hill over at Cornell. The idea is that people across the United States will volunteer to report when the buds on different plants around them open up, so that scientists can look at the data and see whether there are any shifts in plant cycles along with climate change. It’s kind of like a feeder watch, but horticultural.