March’s Heralds: Blooms and Birds Welcome the Season’s Arrival

March 31, 2020

On this day in 1859, Lydia A. Tompkins offered a vivid invitation in her poem Come to the Woods, beckoning us to witness the first signs of nature’s awakening:

Come to the woods, where flowers bloom,
The violet peeps beneath each tree,
And on the wintry slope bestirs
The silver-leafed Anemone.
The yellow Cowslip decks the pool,
And early Crowfoot lifts its shining head,
The star-eyed Liverleaf looks forth
From out its green and mossy bed.
Lichnidia tall and Draba pure
And Erythronium appear,
Claytonia comes with penciled brow,
The first of all the pleasant year.
Wake-robin nods its snowy crest,
The Blue-Bells pale, Collinsia rare,
The tiny Ground Nut, Squirrel Corn,
All the joyous welcome give and share.
I then to nature's palace grand,
All purple, yellow, green, and gold;
Leaf-music, bird-songs, fill the air,
The summer days, their revel hold.

Tompkins’ poem paints a vivid floral parade, celebrating early blooms that hint at the vibrancy soon to fill the landscape.

Ogden Nash captures the restless spirit of March with wry humor:

Indoors or out, no one relaxes in March, that month of wind and taxes; the wind will presently disappear, the taxes last us all the year.

Nash encapsulates March’s mixed reputation—its windy chill and unwelcome financial burdens—that gardeners and all endure as nature prepares to burst forth.

Lucy Larcom, American poet and author, animates March with a lively call to the renewed life awakening in bird song and blossoming flowers:

March! March! March! They are coming
In troops to the tune of the wind.
Redheaded woodpeckers drumming,
Gold - crested thrushes behind;
Sparrows in brown jackets, hopping
Past every gateway and door;
Finches, with crimson caps, stopping
Just where they stopped before.

March! March! March! They are slipping
Into their places at last. . .
Little white lily buds, dripping
Under the showers that fall fast;
Buttercups, violets, roses;
Snowdrop and bluebell and pink,
Throng upon throng of sweet posies
Bending the dewdrops to drink.

March! March! March! They will hurry
Forth at the wild bugle sound,
Blossoms and birds in a flurry,
Fluttering all over the ground.
Shake out your flags, birch, and willow!
Shake out your red tassels, larch!
Grass blades, up from your earth - pillow.
Hear who is calling you. . . March.

Her lively verse fills the imaginations of gardeners eager for spring’s early awakenings—buds breaking, birds returning, and the earth stirring from its winter sleep.

Together, these words bring the essence of March to life: a month of transition, anticipation, and jubilant preparation for the fullest bloom of the year.