March madness, the kind on the creek

 I love March Madness, the NCAA basketball tournaments, but I love the madness on the creek even more. I started the month in a rag sweater under a field coat. Now, I’m sweating in a T-shirt.

The creek bank is a combination of brown and green. The green shoots of cattails are growing in thickets of brown stubble from last year.

Within the past weeks, most of the cedar elms have gone from bare to green. The ash trees are in leaf, though the leaves seem to me to show as much yellow as green. Pecans, cypresses and deciduous oaks are still bare. 

Most — but not all — of the grasses are still brown. One day soon the clover will come in, and San Antonio will suddenly be green.

Spring is arriving a bit behind schedule, at least from what I’ve seen. In 2020, some cypress trees were putting out balls, or cones, by St. Patrick’s Day. At that time, one of the biggest cypress trees was green enough to hide a hawk’s nest, and a mulberry tree favored by a vermilion flycatcher was in full leaf. This year, both trees are bare.

I saw swallows over Elmendorf Lake on March 2. But they’ve been scarce since, and they haven’t started building their mud nests under the 24^th Street Bridge.

I’ve seen fewer insects — dragonflies and mosquitos — than in past years.

I’ve been watching for the early bloomers: docks, bastard cabbage, prickly sowthistle, hedge parsley. So are, only the docks are putting out seed.

Still, spring is here. Every songbird has a twig in its beak.