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Nature Reflections - May 25, 2006
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Nature's hidden bounty by Jean Griffin Spring
- the time when nature seems to be most bountiful, arousing our senses
by bringing fresh colours to the landscape, bursts of songs of birds to
fields and forests, brief sightings of young animals as they emerge
from dens, and new yet-old fragrances of rain-washed fields and forests
- a time to be refreshed and renewed. Every
year when spring arrives we experience once again all that we had seen,
heard, smelled or touched in other years. Yet each fresh new flower,
each colourful returning migrant bird, each young animal, each early
butterfly, each form of life that appears is new and an opportunity to
learn again the wonders of nature. Sometimes
nature surprises us! We think we know the landscape and what it holds
for us to see. But nature has a way of hiding some of its secrets, and
unless we look and listen we may not really know what is there. Early
shrubs that appear are the Serviceberries or as some call them the
Juneberries or Shadbushes. And for years I have readily recognized two
species - the Downy and the Smooth Serviceberry - which are the first
two to open. Then this spring I realized I have been overlooking
another that opens just a few days later - because it looked similar I
had been assuming it was the same. A lesson learned! How
many times have you looked at the White or Red Trilliums, and enjoyed
their colours, and after the flower has faded assumed that all the
remaining leaves are those of that two. A friend learned last year not
to be thus deceived. While doing some work he happened to disturb the
leaves and to his surprise, there was a flower hidden under the leaf
canopy. What he had found was a Nodding Trillium, a trillium that
blooms later than the other two, and whose flower remains hidden under
the protection of the leaves. I went to see it this week, and it is a
beautiful little flower - white, with pink anthers, with recurved
petals. Another lesson! Many insects are protected from predators by camouflage and it may mean we never see them - unless we stop and look. Turn
over rocks or rotting trees that have been lying on the ground, and
there may be a salamander, or a snake there you have not noticed
before. (If you do turn over rocks, etc., put them back afterwards so
life can continue for what is there). And
so in spring we enjoy all that we have enjoyed the past years, but need
to stop, look and listen and recognize what nature has to offer that we
may have been missing! Observations: Sandy Hallam,
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