My Own Little Holiday: "Leaf Out Day"

A first hint of green in the woods behind my St. Albans, Vermont home
with some lilac buds in the foreground. 

Every spring I celebrate my own totally arbitrary holiday with my own personal arbitrary rules in which I  arbitrarily pick the date based on some green I see in my surroundings.

It's called Leaf Out Day.

Every spring, I note the first time I see any fairly sizable tree around me with new, tiny fresh green leaves. This year, the moment came two days ago, on Tuesday.

The celebration will now go on as as Ma Nature picks away at the predominant brown surroundings and turns them green.

The first "green" tree of the season is usually a very hardy poplar. They're not my favorite trees, usually, but some varieties are the first to green up.

As I said, my rules for Leaf Out Day are totally arbitrary. The scrubby invasive honeysuckle bushes on the side of the highway turned a little green more than a week ago, but I don't count those. Some willow trees seem vaguely green, too, but I don't count those, either.

I also know the spring green up in Vermont is a months long process, starting with the first crocus shoots in March and ending with fully mature summer leaves around Memorial Day, when you can finally plant your tomatoes.

The entire greening process is wonderful, but for me Leaf Out Day is the time to really start celebrating spring full blast.

Leaf Out Day's date cannot really be foretold in advance. It all depends on weather conditions. This year's was about normal as far as schedule goes. I've lived in Vermont all my life, and Leaf Out Day has changed.  It used to come in the first week of May, decades ago when I was a kid. Now, it almost always hits during the last week of April.

The earliest one I can remember was in 2002, when an early season April hot spell of 90 degrees made Leaf Out Day come on April 17.

There are other aspects of Leaf Out Day that I love. It's about the time daffodils are peaking. I also love the landscape. In areas with a decent sugarbush, you have lush green fields bordering those maple trees which have gone from winter gray to this rich reddish brown as their buds reach to a point where they are juuustt prepare to open.

Soon, those buds will pop into green, too.

Daffodils and hyacinth continue to bloom in my St. Albans,
Vermont garden. 

The greening process continues into what I call Vermont's real foliage season in May. Everybody is in awe of Vermont's autumn, but the spring foliage season is far better.

True, in the spring, most of the colors are green, but they are every imaginable shade of green. And the way the sun backlights new green leaves into this shimmering emerald is just spectacular.

The pace of Leaf Out Day, and the subsequent Leaf Out Month as I call it. The pace of that also depends on the weather. This might be one of those years where the pace is relatively slow. (In recent years, we seem to go from winter to summer in a blink of an eye.

Temperatures are forecast to be mostly cool through the middle of May. In fact, I do worry about signs that one of these cold shots might be too strong, and deep frost could kill some of these new leaves. But that remains to be seen.

All of what I just talked about is very familiar to any Vermonter who has so much as stepped outside to enjoy spring.

But do what I do. Especially in troubled times, it's great to create your own happy holiday. Leaf Out Day isn't just mine. It's everybody's. And you get to choose all those arbitrary rules as to what constitutes the holiday. Your rules might be totally different from mine, and that's part of the beauty of it. It is your own personal holiday.

It's a rolling holiday, too, starting way early in the South, maybe in late February and going up into Canada as the month of May rolls through.

Happy Leaf Out Day, everyone!