According to the U.S. Naval Observatory, the Vernal Equinox occurs this year on March 20th at 1:32 pm. It marks the day of the year when the amount of sun and the amount of darkness are exactly equal. Though, more importantly, the Vernal Equinox signals the end of Winter and the beginning of Spring in our hemisphere!
Here in New Jersey, 16 days out from glorious Spring, we’re already starting to see the first signs that it’s on its way.
Firstly, it nearly hit 50 degrees!
Now, though the thermometer reads like Spring, we still have snow in our back yard and through the woods. But, out in the front yard, which is Western exposure, we only have one tiny patch remaining:
Our first robin made her appearance a few weeks ago, just as the snow was starting to melt. I don’t know where they go for the winter, but they surely are the first harbinger of Spring. And just today we lovingly observed the Canada Geese pairing off.
As for our gardens, the narcissus are well up and heading towards budding. Although, to be fair, they’ve been up since an unseasonably warm day in January, because in New Jersey weather is just weird sometimes (can anyone say snowpocalypse 2010?), and a few days in January felt more like October.
Our tulips are pushing up through the old mulch in a couple of places, and even our daffodils in the back yard (in the shade), are coming up!
Our favorite garden store is open for the season, and yes, we did drive by already, though they don’t have anything much out yet besides mulch. Wait a week though, and that will change, for sure. I can’t wait to fill our poor winter bare wine barrel planter with some color!
Once the snow is completely gone, we’ll be out with rakes to get rid of the old leaves & sticks that have built up on the beds, trim back any branches that didn’t make it through the snow, and put down mulch. Sadly, we lost a rhododendron at the end of the season last year, after nursing it through the summer, so I’ll be replacing that first. I’d like to put in a stone path this year through the front bed, and figure out some low-light, low-growing, green ground cover for the “lawn” part of our tiny back yard. We'll be installing a new bird (squirrel) feeder in the back, and, trading out our snowman garden flag for one that has spring flowers on it.
We just can’t wait for the warmer days of Spring: the return of song birds, the sweet smell of lilacs, the rainbow colors of tulips, and many glorious afternoons spent in the garden!