It's Foliage Season In Vermont!

My idea of Vermont foliage season. A springtime view last
year in Franklin County. 

No, despite the headline in this post, I haven't gone off the deep end. I fully understand it's spring, not autumn.

But really, we've hit what I consider the nicer of the two foliage seasons in Vermont. The one where the landscape comes to life in an explosion of green and blooms. As in right now.

I say this every year in May, but I have no idea why the Vermont Department of Tourism and Marketing doesn't promote this time of year like they do the traditional fall foliage season.

True the Vermont tourism web page currently has a gorgeous spring view, but still.

Maybe it's just as well. I can enjoy the scenery without rubbing elbows with too many lost tourists.

Yes, fall foliage here is gorgeous, and perhaps a bit more multi-colored than the spring foliage. However, it's hardly monochromatic out there at the moment. There's every shade of green imaginable in the buds and new leaves, and it seems to change by the minute.

Yesterday was a great example. We had near summer-like warmth in the afternoon, and the woods responded. When I drove to work early Monday morning in the northern Champlain Valley, the landscape was mostly brown with splashes of green.

By the time I drove back home in the late afternoon, the landscape was green was spots of lingering early spring brown.

Plus it's fascinating in the spring to watch the green start on the ground, in the grass, in the lowest elevations, then climb into the trees, and then climb the slopes of the soon-to-be aptly named Green Mountains.

There's other wonderful colors, of course. Pops of white shadbush blooms are emerging in the forests. Patches of white and pink trillium are about to create throw rugs of blooms on patches of wet forest floors.

It was cool and damp most of this spring, and that was great for the forsythia and daffodils. These yellow blooms almost glow in the dark they're so brilliant. I don't know a friendlier face than a happy looking daffodil bobbing gently back and forth in the breeze. Soon, meadows will be polka dotted with thousands of dandelion blooms. Who can resist that?

And it keeps coming. Next up, pink and purple crabapple trees will pop out, and lilacs. Those glorious, aromatic lilacs.  It's impossible for me to walk down a street without sticking my face and nose into every lilac bloom I encounter on my trip.

Speaking of aromas, have you ever really smelled the air this time of year, especially on a rainy or humid evening? It's a gorgeous, rich organic smell, punctuated by the sweetness of blooming flowers.

The sounds you hear this time of year are about as pleasant as you can get, too. This time of year when I take the dogs outside at dawn, we're treated to the happy sound of robins greeting the morning, and the DEE-DEE of chickadees debating each other in opposing trees.

Like every season, spring in Vermont does have its drawbacks. The black flies swarming in your face are unpleasant to say the least. You also can't go hiking in the woods and mountains. It's too muddy and wet.

But we'll take it. Amid the bitter winds and deep snow of early March, when we've already endured winter for months, I often ask myself, "Why do I live in Vermont?"

I get my emphatic answer when I walk out the door into the explosively re-awakening new green landscape.