In the hills, March is a woodpecker drumming in a new season. It’s the liquid trill of tree frogs and the plaintive notes of peepers heralding the return of spring.
Its wild geese winging their way northward over the Smokies and blue jays chattering of new days to come.
It’s the sun writing tomorrow’s message on the earth.
It’s a time when winter lingers in the lap of spring.
It’s gusty days and calm days, chill days and warm days.
It’s April whispering from the ridge tops while March goes whistling down the valley.
It’s song sparrows in the alders and robins strutting in the pasture.
It’s a velvet coated bumblebee hunting for a nest site and a honeybee buzzing for the first taste of pollen.
March is the first daffodils making the whole world golden.
It’s the heavy creamy white blooms of the serviceberry and the white and pinkish waxy blooms of trailing arbutus.
It’s buds fattening on the poplars and catkins opening on the willows.
It’s violets and columbine, yellowbells and periwinkle.
It’s tiny clouds of canary yellow blowing off the catkins of the greening alders along the branch.
March is the time when the owl hoot is a mating call.
It’s squirrels frisking through the big maples in the front yard of a farmhouse.
It’s the bears in the Smokies venturing from their winter quarters.
It’s groundhogs scouting for greens and crows calling in a new register.
It’s sap rising time and rail splitting time.
It’s a mess of “creases”
It’s a parade of spring remedies – sulphur and molasses, cherry bark bitters, sassafras tea.
It’s bags of fertilizer and grass seed and clover.
It’s minnows and tadpoles.
It’s a time when trout fishermen begin to get that faraway look in their eyes.
It’s lengthening days and shorter nights.
It’s a dog dozing slit eyed in the sun and a horse grazing on a green pasture.
It’s a sky of crisp azure blue virgin of cloud.
It’s brooks talking and singing.
It’s the bloom of spicebush and yellowroot.
It’s the tops of the maples kindling their fires.
It’s anemones turning the forested jungles into a glittering white carpet.
It’s a new plowed field and the smell of freshly turned earth.
All this and more March is in the hills.