New colors in the forest

 I saw blue violets, Viola sororia, blooming on Valentine’s Day and worried that frost would get them.

Sure enough, we had a freeze, but the violets are thriving.

After the cold snap, dimpled trout lilies, Erythronium umbilicatum, started to bloom. The yellow flowers are scattered over the forest floor just south of Stone Mountain. They’re a plant of the Southeast and so new to me.

In the past two weeks, we’ve had days in the 80s and nights in the 20s, and I don’t know what to think.

If this is spring, this is the way it came to the forest: The red maples put on their red blossoms first. The redbuds bloomed, and then the dogwoods. The beech trees are still holding on to last year’s leaves. They’re the color of faded khaki. The combination of blooms — dark red, reddish-purple, white, green-white — against the deep greens of the magnolias and pines and the exhausted tans of the beeches is lovely.

But I’m still baffled. Blooms that I was expecting to see in April and May are here.

And I’m not the only individual in the Animal Kingdom who is confused. I ran across a Dekay’s brownsnake, Storeria dekayi, on Feb. 8.