104 - Spring Is Already Here — You Just Have to Know Where to Look

0:00What if I told you that some of the most important flowers of the year bloom when we still think it's winter? Hi, everyone. Jill from the Northwoods. How are you? I don't know about you, but I have spring fever, and if you stepped outside with me for just a minute and you'd look around with me and would say, well, the grass is mostly brown, and decided whether it's going to be greener, it's going to stay brown for a little while. Some patches of snow are hiding here or there, maybe on the north side of the house, on a little bit on the side of the fence. And the ground feels a little soft and mushy on top, but still hard just underneath it. And if you press your boot down, you can still feel the frost a few inches below. Nothing looks alive yet. The world is still on pause, but you know what, it really isn't. Somewhere in this yard, maybe right around the foundation of the house, maybe somewhere near

1:00the mailbox, somewhere where the snow melted first, something's already blooming. Somewhere nearby, something with wings is already flying around looking for it. Today we're talking about the very first flowers of spring, those bold ones that just shoot up at the most dangerous times of the year. A lot of times people walk right past them, depend on early spring, not just to be pretty, but for survival. If you look up at the trees, and my friend and I were driving through the country, it's our favorite thing to go for drives and sort of talk about the world, and we were looking up at the trees, and we noticed that there was sort of this brown fuzz all over the place. Maybe it's a place that looked like white fuzz, and we started thinking, is there frost around? Looked at the thermometer in the cards, 28 degrees outside, I guess it couldn't be frost, but it's a little late in the day from it. And the more we started looking, it's the first looms of spring.

2:00There's buds all over the tree. It is starting to happen. The silver maples, they are already starting to get the buds, not quite leaves, but they're already starting to get there so that they can produce leaves. Tiny little reddish clumps in the branches, and if you didn't know what you're looking for, you would miss them. Maple flowers. The bees don't miss them. Silver maples can bloom before the leaf are out in the wind blowing around. Insects can move pollen around freely while it is still in its very infant stage. It's very early, but it's a very strategic move for them so that they can start getting the busy work of spring done. Red maples also bloom very early too. They have that deep red flower cluster that almost a glows gray on the branches on a cloudy day. That's probably what we were seeing. The trees are really the early heroes of early pollinators that are flying around out

3:02there. So while it feels like things aren't quite alive, there are things out there. In fact, I got hit by a bug the other day when I was out walking around. I even saw a spider, and he looked pretty miserable, but because he got far away from where it was that it was nice and he was in a parking lot. So I sort of scooped him up and I put him back on the tree. Stuff is starting to come alive. Pussy willows. Those are one of my favorites. They are fuzzy little brushes. They go around creek edges, damp areas, and now they're starting to swell with what they call these soft gray catkins, right, pussy willow catkins. And they're loaded with pollen. So for a bumblebee, emerging from winter, finding a pussy willow that is just at the beginning of blooming is like finding an oasis. They bloom early on purpose. Willows often grow near water. They're a little bit invasive towards water. They grow and spread and spread, but it's good because that damp soil warms up just a

4:06little bit faster than the underground, more in the prairie area. And they start to give early access and early advantages to all the insects out there trying to look for a meal. You might notice too that along the dangling catkins, there are on birch and alder trees as well. They look like little brown tassels sort of swaying in the wind. These are wind pollinators and they don't need the bees necessarily, but they surge to life very early. Trees pushing out pollen into the air before leaves get in the way. I'm not quite at sneezing season yet, so I don't think the pollen is quite here yet, but we are getting there. Spring starts before we even really notice it at eye level unless you really take a cook look at it. Now if you drop your eyes to the ground, the first colors of spring are usually big patches of soil and brown, but suddenly we start seeing snow drops.

5:07Snow drops are usually one of the very first flowers. They have little white bells on them and they push straight through the frozen soil. The part I love the most is that snow drops can generate a small amount of heat as they grow enough to melt the snow just around them. So they're literally melting their way up through the ground and into spring. They don't wait for the ideal conditions. They create their own openings. Crocuses, they're another big flower. They come in purple, yellow, striped. There's some white ones out there and they open wide in the sun and then they close up at night, cold days too. They're not fragile, but they're trying to protect their pollen. The little flower knows when to conserve and when to spread open and let it loose and you'll often see bees buried inside of a crocus on a warm March afternoon. That image alone tells you spring has just begun.

6:09And then we have something. Some people call the glory of snow. Some people call it crocus lilies. I call them, I think just purple lilies, but they're small, blue star-shaped plants and they're beautiful. They bloom right through the snow. They don't panic when a few flakes of fall. They just bloom and hang out and wait and that's always, I think, my favorite flowers of spring. I have a bunch of them sitting in my backyard. There's something called skillah, which is a little tiny carpet of blue flowers. You might want to try planting some for early pollinators next year if you like helping out the pollinators. That's a big thing around my town is helping out the pollinators, but they bloom when almost nothing else does. Daffodils quickly behind there. We always get some very early spring daffodils. They contain a compound called lycorin, which makes them toxic to most deer and rodent, which

7:11is why they survive oftentimes when tulips don't. They're very beautiful and they defend themselves. My friend grows a bunch of tulips and every spring, she plants the bulbs, but she sees them get locked off by the chipmunks and the rabbits and things. The daffodils, at least they defend themselves, so they survive a little bit better. Tulips, like I said mentioned, they knee-cold to bloom properly. It's called vernalization and that snow that we always complain about in the late, you know, we get that late snow and they're like, we're ready for spring. Why are you still snowing? That's going to be tomorrow. We're getting like two inches of snow, but tulips, they're built for it. Tulips come from under the snow, they're not troubled by it. They go right on schedule and they come up and they're like, they're always one of the most beautiful flowers out there. Highest since they bloom early as well, they have a really pretty scent and on a cold day, boy, that scent really travels very nicely.

8:12The scent helps to attract early pollinators. We all are, you know, we think of it as just being pretty, but usually things in nature have a functionality, so that's kind of fun. Then there's something called coltsfoot. And once the soil is disturbed on the side of a road, you might start noticing coltsfoot. It looks a little bit like a dandelion and it blooms before its leaves appear. So it's flowers first and then comes the leaves. It's one of the earliest wild flowers we have in this neck of the woods. I always like seeing them as I'm driving along. It's important, you know, to know about these early blooms because there's a number of different critters out there counting on those early blooms. Think about the bumblebee queens. You see that large, lone bumblebee queen coming out in March. She survived underground, alone, storing food and stored fat.

9:12She emerges from her den starving. She has to find nectar for energy, pollen, so she can start producing eggs. And everything depends on those first flowers. She's not aggressive. In fact, it's so funny. Bumblebees are just one of my favorite things. I always go hiking and they always, I tell my friend that they're escorting us out of the area. They're kind of territorial. They won't sting you, though. She's just looking for food. She's looking to protect her colony and she is just very focused. In many ways, she's one of the most important insects you'll see probably all year. There's mining bees. Those are the small little tiny bees that hover over the low bear soil. They nest underground. They too are solitary. They're also gentle. And so whenever you see some bear ground in your yard, it's probably a good place for those solitary bees. If it's mulched, a spotless yard, you're not going to get very many bees early on.

10:18So it's very good for the bees to just sort of have a little mess out there. We did a whole video on the messy yard. The other part is there are some butterflies out there that overwinter as adults. Some of them tuck themselves into bark and tree cavities and on a warm February and March day before the flowers are even open. They may be flying around. And they feed on sap, rotting fruit, that is berries and stuff like that, still on the trees. And so they have plenty to eat as they're coming out. So if you've ever seen a butterfly emerging sort of early towards winter, sometimes they're called a morning cloak, kind of interesting. But hoverflies are another one that look a little bit like bees. They don't sting, but another important early pollinator. So it kind of, like I said, it's a clever disguise for them because they look like bees so people stay away from them. But they're gentle. And again, they're helping bring this whole spring world out to us.

11:24We get that warm winter. My friend and Emma and I were out hiking and a lot of birds were packing at trees. So you could get this idea that bugs are starting to move inside of the trees. But you know what? We also get snow. So it might be warm a couple of days. It was warm last week. Now we're going to get snow tomorrow. Snow returns. The crocuses get buried. The snow drops disappear. It's not a defeat, right? These flowers are tougher than you think they are. And they contain antifreeze-like components in their cells. So the snow actually helps insulate them a little bit. The flowers, they're not worried about it. We worry, I think, more about the bees and the bumblebees. A bumblebee queen cannot fly below 50 degrees. So if this snow catches her out foraging, she has to find shelter, leaf litter, a log someplace where she can burrow in. If a cold snap lasts too long, it may be very hard for her to survive.

12:26So this is again a wild leaf litter. Not cleaning up your yard. So nice and tightly, brush piles. That's why it matters. I have a stick pile in my backyard. I have leaf litter in my backyard. You know, when I first bought this house years ago, I was dutifully cleaning up my backyard in fall and then in spring. And the guy who lived behind me, he was the arborist for a tree arboretum that we have here in town. And he said, I saw you working so hard out there. I want you to know. You don't have to work this hard. In fact, it is better for nature if you leave leaf piles, brush material all around your yard. Nature will be better off for it. Wait to clean up your yard. It's not a mess. It's helping you host all the life that exists around you so that they can actually survive unstable springs a little bit better.

13:28You think of it as emergency housing for our nature right outside our front door. So some things that you can do that if you're looking is first go out there and look at the first blooms. Make sure you notice them and check them out. Look up into the trees. Not just at eye level, but higher up. Do they look fuzzy? Can you see them blossoming just a little bit? Watch out for those bumblebee queens. They'll start looking around and trying to be productive early on. Leave the leaves and the litter and the sticks out there a little bit longer. And even if you wanted to, you could start planting bulbs this coming fall so that the next spring you have a bunch of tulips and hrokeses and different things coming up. And when you start looking around, you might start seeing. You might write them down. Write down your first crocus, write down your first bumblebee or your first butterfly. You're taking a little bit of notice about what you see as we start shifting into spring.

14:28You will become a citizen scientist of your very own yard once you start to notice how nature looks like right outside your back door. Are you one? Thanks so much. I appreciate you being there. I hope that this is helpful to you. Maybe you have spring fever like I do. It's important to know that even if we get snow or we get cold snaps, the world isn't sleeping out there. The fuzzy dreams are blooming and the crocuses are opening and the bees are starting to wake up. And spring just doesn't arrive all at once. You're always welcome to email me at you'll start with small steps dot com. You can leave a message if you're watching this in a video channel. I hope you're enjoying your very early spring just like I am too.