Springtime’s ebb and flow brings changes

Ah, spring! Water is shedding from the hills in quantities too vast for our small waterways to handle. It flows madly down the steepest slopes and floods vast areas of lowland. Accountable only to gravity, it flows freely, babbling over dried tufts of last-year’s grass, ambles down the hillside, only to abruptly switch directions when reaching the roadside ditch. I wonder: where will this water be tomorrow?

From where I stand, the water flows into Bartlett’s Stream to the south and east. It courses through Ruffingham Meadow, on to Quantabacook Lake, down the St. George’s River, through a series of ponds, finally dropping into the Atlantic Ocean. At times, this water babbles quietly along a wooded brook where fiddleheads emerge on the banks. It can rage past fly fishermen casting their lines hopefully into pools along the St. George. What a lovely thought that this water is born from the snow shed across our fields and woods and comes to a mighty end in the ocean.

For now, we enjoy the sound and sight of the water flowing past. Some get annoyed by the flooding and washouts caused by the melting snow, but when you live on a high, steep ridge the spring waters move through so fast, you must enjoy them while you can. My daughters make homemade “boats” out of anything remotely buoyant and sail them down the waterways and through the culverts. From slips of shingles and sticks to more elaborate boards equipped with a sail made from a plastic straw and a piece of newspaper, they launch their boats down the ditch, nudging them along with a stick when they get hung up on debris.

Spring is nourishing in its own right. As a nice stiff breeze grazes our cheeks and wafts up our nostrils, the rest of the natural world seems to be reveling in this same blissful, penetrating energy. Eastern bluebirds flit about singing happily, hopefully. We cleaned the old nests from our bluebird boxes yesterday as the beautiful, rust-breasted male watched from the telephone wires above. The old nest filled the bottom 2 or 3 inches of the box and was made with layers of pine needles carefully latticed together.

For now, only the male bluebird is present and he watches intently, with his head cocked to one side, as we perform the spring cleaning of his home. His clear, bright blue head, wings and tail contrast with his breast. His mate will be slightly less breathtaking in her beauty. The mature female has a dull brownish-gray head and back, with blue wing tips and tail. The young will look similar to the juvenile robin, with a speckled breast and brown caps, but their wings and tail will be telltale blue as the adult bluebird.

Bluebirds have a soft gurgling song that consists of three or four notes that have a “chur-wi” or “tru-ly” sound to them. They eat insects, worms, snails, berries and fruits and prefer to live along the wooded edges of open farmland. They sometimes nest in the tops of hollowed-out fence posts and often can be spotted perching on fence wires.

As the sun sinks over the trees to the west, we drag our wet feet and play-weary bodies into the house, with a perfect, strange blend of happiness, freedom and exhaustion. During the long, hot days of summer, we traipse into the house from the garden, our bodies sore from planting or weeding or running that beastly, Godforsaken, man-killer of a rototiller. But in spring, before the brunt of outdoor work has revealed itself, those same pleasant physical sensations have more carefree causes.

I have to laugh as I watch my daughters strip off their soaked mud boots and the socks that are stuck so solidly to their wet feet that it’s practically impossible to remove them. As they shed the layers of soggy clothing, their little eyelids droop with contented fatigue. As I stuff newspaper down into the toes of their boots, I think of how much they’re like that water running down the hillside. Who knows where tomorrow will bring them? They’re happy ambling along, accountable only to gravity, in pursuit of happiness and the freedom that comes with the new beginnings of spring.

Diana George Chapin is the NEWS garden columnist. Send horticulture questions to Gardening Questions, RR1, Box 2120, Montville 04941, or e-mail them to dianagc@ctel.net. Selected questions will be answered in future columns. Include name, address and telephone number.