Spring Update

A little update to my post about spring a couple days ago.

By the time I got out to the prairie for my hike the other night I only had about an hour of sunlight left but the wind had died down and it was the nicest part of the day. The walk turned out to be a short one but a good one. I saw the tail end of a mouse as it scurried away under a shelf of frozen snow and saw a group of ducks fly low and silent directly over my head. In the distance I could hear a lone red winged blackbird looking for company and my jaw almost dropped when I heard the trilling of a toad at 10 second intervals. I just stood and listened for a few minutes to be sure of what I was actually hearing.

But my favorite part of the evening was when I made my way up a small gravelly hill that faces the southerly sun and spotted a little spot of green in last years dead grass. Kneeling down for a closer look I found myself face to face with the first new growth this season. Even though the frost is far from being out it must have known that if it waited too long it would be choked out by the larger grasses that will steal its water and block its sun. So for the time being this little plant is king of the prairie.