Last week I wrote about Morel mushrooms, location discovered “undisclosed.” But right nearby, short steps from my house, I found these clustered around my neighbor’s tree. Not Morels, that I can tell at a glance; but as Margaret is no longer here to assure me whether edible or not, I simply admired them and left them to their fruiting task. It was enough to see this bursting evidence of what lies under the surface soil.

We’ve also been delighted to see, sporadically, our native squirrel, the Douglas squirrel, named for famed Scottish naturalist David Douglas who wandered this part of the world in the late 1820-early 1830s collecting species. This little fellow is a darker, almost chocolate brown, with large expressive eyes and a cheeky disposition. He is drawn to the seeds scattered from the birdfeeder and the trail I now leave for him along the fence railing. It feels like an exalted lucky day when I catch a glimpse of him.

From our resident eagles wheeling above the neighborhood, to the wild rabbit we saw careening down the street—and even the deer damage evident in our garden—we feel beyond lucky to be living so close to wild nature right in the middle of town.

But on a recent trip we experienced a thrill new to us, awe-inspiring and way-out-of-the-ordinary. We were on a placid-seeming ferry ride heading to Vashon for the annual garden tour when a shout went up from a fellow passenger to look! Look over there!

The day was overcast with mixed clouds and some blue-sky breaks but not too misty to see a dark shape across the waters from our boat: there, not there, but there again. A cloud of exhaled moist air! A fin languidly floated into the air. A large gray shape surfacing and oh my, curving high out of the water in a leap that brought gasps of excitement from the small crowds gathered on the deck. We were all enthralled! It was a lone, smallish—small for a whale, that is—humpback whale!

Everyone stayed to watch as it rose, rolled, and heaved out of the water, again and again. Probably unaware of the admiring group—we were not at all close by—but just enjoying the slap of water and the feel of the cool air. Finally we were reaching the dock and had to get in our cars. We had a wonderful day looking at amazing gardens, but sighting the whale was the unexpected delight of the day. Another very wild delight!

Humpbacks are making a comeback in Puget Sound waters. They had been severely decimated by unrestrained whaling for years as they migrated north to Alaska from Hawaii, Mexico and Central America in the Spring, and then retraced their routes in the Fall. But in the last few decades they are recovering their numbers; there is hope for them. Some of this population makes a detour into Salish Sea waters to feed and loiter where we can catch glimpses of them. They come to find krill and forage fish like herring and sand lances, a kind of pit stop to help them on their journeys. And while here they remind us to keep a watch out. You just never know what might be outside!

Today happens to be World Oceans Day, as designated by the United Nations to raise awareness of the threats faced by these crucial waters and actions we can take to address them. The theme this year is “Revitalization: Collective Action for the Ocean” Begin with awe, and then find some way to get involved. The Humpbacks are recovering but there is so much still to do.

Mushrooms are on my mind. I spent a chunk of time yesterday searching online to discover a possible date for the founding of the New York Mycological Society…so far, unsuccessfully, but I’m still hoping for an aha! moment. Soon after moving to New York City in 1927, Margaret joined the Boston Mycological Society and some time after that met Dr. William Sturgis Thomas who was an avid mushroom hunter and promoter, leading forays and spreading enthusiasm through his field guide, The Field Book of Common Mushrooms, with a catchy subtitle “with a key to their identification and directions for cooking those that are edible,” published in 1928. Did Margaret get encouragement for her own first book on mushrooms, Mushrooms of Field and Wood, published the following year, from her new friend and colleague? And was the emphasis on “edibles” a seed planted in her mind for her second book, published many years later, The Savory Wild Mushroom? (You can easily see how investigating Margaret’s complicated story leads down myriad paths of enquiry!)

At any rate, Dr. Thomas launched a New York group and recruited Margaret to serve as its secretary. They seemed to have worked together until Thomas’ death in 1941. Meanwhile, they had a lot of fun gathering with other converts exploring the countryside beyond the City for their favorite gourmet treat.

Margaret wrote about mushrooms and was active in other mushroom societies for the rest of her life. She was a nationally recognized expert and a local celebrity who welcomed knocks on her door from neighbors wanting her okay-to-eat blessing of various specimens collected from field and wood. Annually, she organized mushroom displays in downtown store windows and at garden shows to help locals build confidence in their hunting and cooking adventures. She spread the word in accessible pamphlets called Nature Notes and in newspaper columns. Olympia became a center for mushroom literacy, a legacy that continues.

In this Note, she carefully describes the Morel, its distinctive shape, colors, and where to look for it and when—Spring, not Fall—and its preference for “old neglected apple orchards where apples have fallen and decayed on the ground. Or on burnt-over land.” She also calls our attention to another mushroom, the Brain mushroom, that has a close resemblance to the Morel but which is poisonous to some people. Interestingly, she uses as references her own mushroom book and the one written by Dr. Thomas.  It’s a nice remembrance three years after his passing.

Mushroom lovers rarely—perhaps never—share their secret places where they find their treasures. But they continue the generous impulses established by early mushroom advocates to share those treasures! We were the lucky recipients yesterday when there was a happy knock on our door and an offer of a handful of Morels to spruce up our dinner from our neighbor, which transformed an ordinary evening into a mini feast!

Margaret’s recipe in The Savory Wild Mushroom for Sautéed Morels is very simple: After careful washing and a brief parboil, she advises cutting them in half, dusting with flour and frying in butter, with a little salt. We skipped the parboil step, but added thinly sliced shallot and a little olive oil with the butter. You could hardly go wrong keeping everything to a minimum to let the woodsy Morel taste shine. We clinked our wine glasses to Margaret, to wonderful neighbors, and to the bounty of nature.

On a more serious note, if you want to learn more about the ecology and status of mushrooms today, here is a source for learning more and for actions being taken to preserve this critical life form so essential to the health of the Earth. Margaret would have been so interested in these new discoveries!

Why It’s Time to Include Fungi in Global Conservation Goals

“Carpets of lush seedlings swished around our ankles. Columns of taller hemlocks marched down fallen logs, their leaders lusty in their search for the sun, roots entwined with the wood….I stopped and looked back. Silhouetted in the setting sun, rising above the others, rooted in the volcanic rocks that nourished her, was the Mother Tree of this wide swath of seedlings.”

The words—and all the work that stands behind Suzanne Simard’s insights—that confirm the intelligence and connectedness of forest communities strike deep chords within me. That trees communicate, share and care for each other in ways we are only beginning to understand is one of the most profound and positive discoveries we have had of late. It gives me such hope that there is an order, a power working in the world based on, not tooth-and-nail competition but compassion and caring. The revelation of the role of Mother Trees feels like only a beginning of possibilities, of other relationships supporting life, that if we learn how to look and listen, we will find what has been there all along.

What better way to celebrate Mother’s Day—and belated Earth Day—Mother Earth Day, then, than a walk in the woods. We went to McLane Nature Trail and let the peace of the pond and forest soak into us. Everyone we saw there was in like mode, quietly letting the sun and surroundings fill them with wonder and quiet joy. From the sight of dabbling baby Wood ducks, gem-colored mallards, the murmurs of nest-making Canada geese to huge turtles sunning on a log and tiny dark forms of newts swimming in the shallows, new life and old was flourishing.

And everywhere the forest revealed its layers of centuries of growth, trees supporting trees in life and past-life, no tree stood alone but in family groups. Companions, mothers and seedlings and young trees reaching up for light but grounded in soil partly composed of ancestors. We walked in awe of the complexity of relationships evident even to our untrained eyes: from nurse logs to what I thought of as venerable-looking grandmother trees. The peace of the woods stayed with us. A refuge in time of need. A celebration of the Earth and a sharing of Earth wisdom.

Some time after she had been teaching for several years, Margaret began work on a special bird book for children, called Wing and Tail Feathers. It was not a field guide-type of book but a narrative story featuring two children, a brother and sister, Jack and Ruth, and their parents, who were great nature-lovers and who, day by day, without being too didactic but rather, through example and demonstration of their own feelings and interest, passed on their passion to their children. The book is full of information about birds, flowers, and other nature subjects, but its real strength is emotional: its deep appreciation and love for the natural world. Through immersion in the life flourishing in their own garden, nearby excursions, and longer day trips, Ruth and Jack’s parents encourage the children’s explorations and deepen their knowledge of their world, but even more importantly, they demonstrate how they feel about all they see and touch.

This is Margaret at her best! The more pages I read of this work, the more I was convinced that this was Margaret’s magic as a teacher made manifest. The mother’s voice was really her own; the father’s as well. But the real genius was that she was also present in the children’s questions and responses. She had never lost touch with a child’s point of view and sense of wonder. All the parts were written from Margaret’s own experience—all remembered. Most of all, what comes through is her intense interest and love of nature, and her willingness to share with others and thereby foster their own wonderment and affection. This was her gift.

The following is an excerpt from the book. I hope you too will read into this story what I see and catch a glimmer of why Margaret is a model for us to follow today. And why we still celebrate her birthday, April 17^th, as a day for a walk in the woods or even, a day in the garden, watching birds and perhaps trying this experiment ourselves:

Later in the morning Mother was helping Jack tie fresh suet to the low branches of the dogwood. Mr. Chestnut-backed Chickadee was so eager for a bite that he circled around and around their heads.

“Keep very quiet children,” whispered Mother, “and I will hold a piece in my hand and see if he will come to me.”

Mr. Chestnut-backed Chickadee fluttered toward her, but just before he reached the suet his courage failed, and he stopped in mi-air, his little wings whirring.

“Just as if he were back-peddling,” murmured Jack under his breath.

Then Mother very softly and sweetly whistled the three notes of the Chickadee love-song.

Mr. Chickadee came again, and this time really landed on the suet. The dear little beady-eyed mite! How they loved him for his fearless, trusting heart!

They hardly dared breathe as he pecked and tore at the delicious lump of fat. But Mr. Chickadee had conquered his fear, and to the intense delight of Ruth and Jack came to their hands too, time after time, often holding tight to their fingers with his little black claws.

Though Mother had always known that Chickadees and sometimes Purple Finches and Grosbeaks became very tame, this was the first time that a bird had ever fed from her hand. She and the children could hardly wait for evening to tell Daddy about it.

And the next morning Daddy himself wanted to hold the suet! When Mr. Chestnut-backed Chickadee flew to his hand, when those tiny, tiny claws fearlessly clasped his bare fingers, Daddy looked at Mother with a strange expression in his dark eyes and said, “ I never before had this kind of feeling about a bird!”

Margaret is still working her magic!

Every spring I feel a tug of worry: Did my two trillium plants make it through the winter? I bought these plants at my local native plant sale several years ago and found a place for them where a camellia bush creates a protective arch of branches and the ground is cluttered with ferns as companions. I hoped they would feel at home there. I don’t think they approve of being moved about after settling in.

Every year they are slow to reappear and yet, to my joy, there they are, at last! By slow, I mean they flower later than the ones in nearby Trillium Park, aptly named, as each spring this is the place to find glorious patches of the white lily. My friend and I make pilgrimages, beginning early—hopeful but pushing the season—until finally we see one “there” and “there” and “look over there!” We learned about this ritual and annually conduct our search in memory of Margaret who greatly prized trilliums and worked hard to teach everyone to both revere and respect this native beauty. She warned that picking this flower and its bright leaves will starve the root and likely kill the plant; if we love it, we should leave it grow and enjoy it where it is.

Margaret describes this “threefold poem of earth, air and water” as a plant “made on a plan of threes.” “They all have three spreading green leaves, three petals, three green sepals and six golden stamens….The green leaves are at first folded around the flower buds.” This makes it very difficult to spot this flower as the green is lost in a sea of other greens at first. But, “as the stems grow upward, the leaves flare out, showing the pointed bud held up on a short stem. As the buds open, the three-petaled flowers send out a delicate perfume…”

A flower for the senses: crisp white petals against vibrant green leaves, an elusive scent, and appearing just as the frogs are pelting out their spring song in the nearby pond and birds are chittering and calling in the trees above. Also, stoking our sense of longing. Our sense of surprise and simple joy when we first see the white petals lighting up the forest floor. Our sense of relief that spring has truly come and that beauty still survives.

We were enthralled to participate in a geology walk yesterday that gave us a whole new insight into the underlying structures of our local wooded park. Under the tree canopy and undergrowth bushes and vines, and layers of moss, decaying leaves and dirt…are layers of rock, gravel, sand and clay, arranged in ridges, swales and scatterings and pock-holes from tiny to lake size. Our geologist guides could read the landscape and unpeel eons of time and the activities of repeated lobes of glacial ice for us. What seemed random or buried or simply mysterious assumed shape and a temporal quality new to our inexperienced eyes. Time stretched out and out; we thought in terms of thousands, tens of thousands and more years.

Certainly the sun shone and the earth tilted on its axis to mark “seasons” but what are seasons without plants pushing through the dirt, flowering and leafing out? What are seasons without pollinators visiting those flowers and birds singing the dawn in and frogs calling from the nearest wetland created by a gouging glacier from long ago? So while we examined trails of gravel and cobblestones, we could also see ”time” unfolding before us on a different scale altogether.

An erratic boulder left behind by a melting glacier was now graced by a blanket of vibrant green moss and sprouting young ferns. Indian plum bushes were flowering. Red current bushes splashed their brilliant color in the fresh green of the woods. Overhead, birds whistled and called, intent on their own agenda of mating and searching for nest sites.

The woods pulsed with springtime energy….all the while the rocks and glacial ridges appeared solid and static. A firm foundation, almost unnoticed. But now we could see two kinds of time: the long, long view of continent building, the ages of mountain formation worn down by gigantic lobes of mile-thick ice wearing rock to silt again and again, while melting-ice water rearranged the landscape, cutting rivers and depositing materials in waves and kettle-holes. The stillness of the rocks was an illusion. And the other kind of time, the time we live in if we are paying attention, of blooming plants and baby birds in Spring, stretching into warmer summer, gold and red into Fall and still and cold in Winter. A third kind, faintly heard, hummed and skipped around us: insects who might live days or weeks, lives compressed into shorter bursts of growth, reproduction, and then death.

It was a great exercise in holding different time scales in mind and appreciating how they all swirled according to type but also all meshed to make our world. The sun pushed through clouds to announce the first day of Spring; the rain held off for our walk in the woods but wasn’t to be denied for long. The cobblestones and gravel would soon be shifted here and there by streams or buried by drifts of leaves or held by tree roots. Nothing stays in one place forever but it all belongs and has its place. The geology lesson added a new layer to ponder and enrich our sense of wonderment. A celebration of Spring with new depth!

“In Walden wood the chickadee”

            ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

In Walden wood the chickadee

Runs round the pine and maple tree,

Intent on insect slaughter:

O tufted entomologist!

Devour as many as you list;

Then drink in Walden Water.

Even Emerson was charmed by these gregarious little birds. They are one of my stalwarts; we have them year round here. I never tire of watching them. They gather in the branches that shelter my birdfeeder and take turns swooping in for the black sunflower seeds. They enjoy the suet too and hang every-which-way on the feeder, choosing just the morsel they want.

The seeds they fly off with may be stashed in some crevice for hungrier times. Here’s an astonishing fact, gleaned from my David Sibley book, What it’s Like to be a Bird:

“….a single chickadee can store up to a thousand seeds in a day, or eighty thousand in a season. This strategy is called scatter hoarding, as the birds simply tuck food away in any crevice where it will fit00in a cluster of spruce needles, in a bark crevice, and so on. Incredibly, the bird can remember where each item is stored, and at least some information about which ones are the best quality and which ones have been eaten already. The hippocampus—the part of the brain involved in spatial memory—is larger in birds that live in colder climates, where storing food is more important; it grows larger in the fall to accommodate multiple storage locations; and then shrinks again in the spring.”

Isn’t that amazing! (I wish I could develop that capacity to find my phone when I misplace it…) I wonder if it’s akin to having a photographic memory? And now, listen to this fascinating fun-fact, also in the Sibley:

“Despite the fact that chickadees are reliable and consistent visitors to bird feeders (they especially like sunflower seeds), more than half of their diet year-round is animal prey. In the northern winter, they hunt for dormant tiny insects and spiders, including eggs and larvae, which are found in bark crevices and dead leaf clusters, along twigs, and in other such places. In the summer, they mostly bring small caterpillars to their nestlings (they can collect over a thousand in a day, but for the first week or so after hatching the adults make special efforts to seek out spiders to feed to their young. Spiders provide the nutrient taurine, which is essential for brain development and other functions.”

How do they know to do that, that spiders will confer such a benefit? I would guess this is an evolutionary success story, but still, how do they pass along this knowledge and practice down the generations? Their brain power is simply astounding to me, for feats of memory and communication. All that dee-dee-deeing has hidden depths! These are not “ordinary” birds. But then, all birds are extraordinary, each in their way.

Rain had been forecast but luck was with us, the sky was cleared of the lowering clouds and light flooded the woods. The dozen eager participants in the Winter Twig Identification class could dispense with umbrellas and focus on the task: really looking at the bare branches of shrubs thrusting skyward along the paths of the park forest.  Could we describe their arrangements of branches and twigs, their colors, textures and growth patterns? More than just a maze of sticks, some with prickles, some smooth, could we see them as individuals with stories to tell if we only knew how to attend?

Yes, stories. That was my ultimate take-away from my two hours of slow tramping through the woods, close fingering of branches (except for the truly prickly ones), and fascinated listening to Ted, our enthusiastic instructor. Each bush had something to tell: a story with a beginning, middle and presumably end, with character development and characteristics, as well as relationships with a whole host of other beings. How did it happen to be growing just here? Did a bird spread its seed from a mother bush over there? Were conditions here just right, with the necessary soil nutrients and light—enough and not too much depending on preference—reaching it through the lattice of other branching trees and bushes? Did this plant have reciprocal relations with other nearby plants, through joint tangled root systems exchanging nutrients and other communications deeper under the soil*? Did this particular bush host pollinators and welcome birds and other browsers, or conversely, repel hungry mouths with a foul taste or the armor of thorns and sharp prickles?

The stories were all about survival and growth, season by season. Though our class was focused on developing skills recognizing plants without benefit of their foliage, Spring growth was advancing faster than the calendar. Twigs were plumping, buds sprouting and tips of nascent leaves showing bits of green. Still, we concentrated on the structure of the plant and the growth patterns of the branches and any remnant bits of fruit or flowers still clinging from the season before. Ted helped us learn to look at each feature for clues of identity, but also as evidence of how the plant functioned.

See these tiny freckle-like dots, for instance? These are called lenticels; they are the pores through which the plant breathes. And these tiny rings here? Those mark the spot where a bud scale—a protective covering—is shed when the bud awakes from dormancy. And these three tiny dots are vascular bundles that are the “veins” that deliver nutrients and water to the emerging leaf. Some of the vocabulary was almost Shakespearean:  some twigs were “glabrous” while others were “pubescent,” in other words smooth skinned or covered with tiny hairs.  Some buds were “appressed” while others could be “ascending,” which described their relative degree of snuggling against their twig and not their social status or measure of happiness.

These were details; the main classification descriptors were the two dominant twig architectures: one being pairs of buds that appear on opposites sides of a stem, or the other, buds that alternate on the stem, stair-stepping up the sides. Plant identification was a matter of divide and conquer: opposites or alternating? And then the details of bud shape, size, color, bits of fruit, favored location and bingo! Ted—and eventually alert students—would know what was before us.

Many of the bushes we examined were plants I knew were in my own garden, some of which I had lost track of their names. With care, I should be able to recognize just what I had brought home from various native plant sales! But for this day, I was already ahead. I had walked in the woods for two hours, enjoying the company of others who felt connected to the trees and bushes, vines, moss and ferns. I had soaked up some sunshine, heard birds trying out their springtime voices, and grasped some of the basics of botanic lore and vocabulary. It was wonder-full.

*If you are interested in learning more about what goes on between root systems, a good place to start is with The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben.

It wasn’t a really harsh winter, no, but just another layer of feeling shut down, still. A kind of scraping along on a low level of energy. I’ve had to be patient and kind with my balky self, nonjudgmental but underneath a muddle of waiting for a spark of light. Now spring is here, creeping in under the fog, lighter earlier every day! Still cold but a new loosening-up is in the air.

I began to take baby steps to recovery. I did some celebratory baking for Imbolc, the halfway point between Winter Solstice and Spring, the Celtic holy day honoring Brigit in early February. Or make any time you need a little “something!”

            Rosemary Oat Bannock

Mix 1 cup of oats, I cup of oat flour, 3 tablespoons of sugar, a pinch of salt, about 2 tablespoons of chopped fresh rosemary, some orange zest (to taste). Cut in 6 tablespoons of chilled butter and knead with your hands to form a large round flat cookie-type patty. Cut into wedges and place into a lightly greased cast-iron pan. Mix the yolk of one egg with a half cup of cream to liberally brush a coating on the wedges; sprinkle with sugar. (I used demerara brown sugar) Bake about 20 minutes until brown in a 400 degree oven. Eat when warm for best flavor.

But most of all I went outside to look for those first signs of the new season: my neighbors’ golden burst of witch hazel, and the tight buds of Daphne in another garden getting closer to opening every day to dazzle our senses with their divine perfume. The snowdrops are bursting into bloom and some shy crocus bulbs are revealing some color.

And I scrubbed out my birdfeeder, put away during the worrisome pine siskin disease-spreading incident of winter, and hung it back up stocked with fresh seeds and suet outside my kitchen window. Word in bird society was quickly communicated by whistles and flutters. Nothing lifts one’s spirits better than a flock of bushtits zooming in to take turns in twos, threes, or tens. Chickadees and nuthatches, some finches and the flicker crowded in. Towhees and juncos picked at the spilled seed below. It was a grand party!

Then, best of all, an email came one day from an alert and generous curator* who reported a new acquisition: a photo album with images of children playing between a pasted-in collection of poems by M. McKenny. Was I interested in seeing them? Was I! It was everything a biographer could want: a new discovery that filled a hole in the storyline and provided fresh interpretations and deepening understanding of personality and events. And not incidentally, more tonic for Spring hunger. Here was a poem about that favorite harbinger Skunk Cabbage. As they say, enjoy!

Skunk Cabbage

Welcomed by the jolly frogs,

Singing gaily from the bogs,

Springtime’s herald now behold,

Dressed in suit of gaudy gold.

Where alder lifts her misty head,

Where snowy lily lies abed,

Where ferns crowd thick upon the ground,

And wood-pecker’s tap the only sound,

There by a little silvery brook,

For brave Skunk-cabbage we must look.

* From the Susan Durr Collection 2022.1 (unaccessioned scrapbook of photos and poems by M. McKenny), Schmidt House Archives, Olympia-Tumwater Foundation.

Thank you Karen Johnson!

Did I miss the moment? I declare, this tree in my front garden was not blazing orange just the other day, I would have noticed. But look at it now! Did it turn color overnight in the dark?

Seeing it all autumnal and gorgeous, huge and dominating my whole view, while enjoying its beauty I did have a sinking feeling too. Do trees change color like that, all in an instance? Or was I just not very observant? Was my tentative project, as described in an earlier post here, to take up the practice of phenology—the noting of significant natural phenomenon “firsts”—more of a wish than a commitment?

It would take real dedication, real attentiveness to master the basics, also discipline and steady application. Not to mention skill and knowledge beyond anything I possessed. I hoped the latter two would increase as I delved into the methodology. I need to deepen my study of trees. I had a lot of half-formulated ideas that needed work.

Is there a kind of switch triggered by, say, hours of daylight, temperature, or some other mechanism that signals the tree to drop its green and highlight brilliant orange or yellow? Yes. A little searching online confirmed that as sunlit days shortened and temperatures dropped, trees slowed their food production process to save energy; this was chiefly true in northern climates but less to not true in southern locations. (Conifers seem to be a whole other story. Let’s look at that another day.)

Leaves are “green” because they contain chlorophyll, the substance that allows them to convert energy from sunlight, plus water, by the process of photosynthesis, into carbohydrates as food for growth. The changing season signals the tree to break down its chlorophyll and store it until the next growing season. All this time leaves have had other substances with yellow and orange, red and purple pigments that were overwhelmed by the green chlorophyll but now, in its absence, are made visible—and glorious. 

It’s likely that my maple tree was changing gradually, the green fading, the orange intensifying, but the mix of chemicals “muddied” the color until the green was truly broken down and the orange freed to flare into the fire it now presents. I’m going to make sure I enjoy it while it lasts. The cold will shrivel today’s brightness into wrinkled, tired looking remnants of past beauties. The tree will be at rest. But come spring…I strive to be attentive to swelling buds and the unfolding of new leaves as the cycle is renewed. Maybe I’ll even “catch the moment” and write it on my calendar…next year.

If you would like to learn more about the practice of phenology a great website on the legacy of Aldo Leopold has inspiring information. He kept a small notebook in his pocket for years, a place to jot down observations while in the field. Now Foundation scientists can create detailed spreadsheets comparing “firsts” from earlier decades with dates from recent years to chart climate change literally flower by flower, tree by tree, and bird by bird. It’s astounding and illuminating. And so important. See: https://www.aldoleopold.org/teach-learn/phenology/