Spring comes on a butterfly’s wing?

Note to newcomers:
Try not to get tired of your neighbors’ remarks about how unusual this spring has been. It’s just been so pretty this year we don’t want you to be disappointed when next year contradicts us.

We had a few hot days several weeks ago, then a cold spell, and now it’s lovely again –so you’ll have to excuse us if we sound a bit confused. The Bradford pears and the redbud (which aren’t red but deep pink – crimson?) put on their usual extravaganza on the parkway, at breakneck speed. And the ornamental cherries so drenched us with white that they obscured the dogwood.

Or did they? Have the dogwoods bloomed yet? We picture dogwood and azalea in flower together, but I don’t remember dogwoods this year.
Beauty is not taken for granted here in Georgia. A group of us who camp together twice a year or so just returned from our annual spring outing, and we were lucky to have with us a master gardener who knows her wildflowers.

I found a  bush with little clusters of white flowers cradling coral-red berries, and thought it might be a runaway pyracantha – except that pyracantha never has flowers and fruit simultaneously.

Whoops. Never say never where wildflowers blow. Pyracantha it is, Judi said, and apparently the winter was mild enough that hordes of cedar waxwings, usually responsible for stripping berries off the bush, didn’t need them this year.

And, ah, the blackberries have begun to bloom. Both bushes and long, spindly branches are banked up into some corners like some late spring snowfall – whence the expression “blackberry winter.”

The gray catbird is back in full mating pursuit. They’ve been here in Fayette County a couple of weeks, lurking almost invisibly in the bushes. There’s just a streak in the air that comes to an instant halt, and if you’ve been watching closely, you might make out that the dark shadow in the heart of the bush is indeed a bird.
Bluebirds are nesting down along the banks of West Point Lake. I don’t think I’ve ever seen them draped in so vivid a blue, the rosy breasts of both sexes confirming that they are bluebirds and not grosbeaks or buntings.

We had a hummingbird here at our feeders about March 31, right on schedule. Then a squirrel knocked the plastic feeder down, cracking it beyond repair, and instead of buying a plastic replacement, I took the opportunity to buy one of the fancy-Dan pear-shaped glass feeders I’ve had my eye on.

Not a good move. We didn’t see another hummingbird until Dave huffed over to K-mart and bought another of the old plastic variety.

“Why would you experiment with colored glass when you know they like the plastic ones?” he huffed. “You always think you can improve on success.”

Be alert to the possibility that a pair of bald eagles is nesting somewhere around Lake Kedron. They were spotted earlier in the season, but I’m not sure they settled in. These are big birds and need more room than our town may offer.

Dave spotted one at West Point Lake, by the way, and reacted quickly enough to point it out to other campers.

We have never seen so many butterflies as we have this spring. In fact, I can remember thinking how few we saw last fall. I have not been able to find quick confirmation for the increase in their numbers this spring, but just by our observation, it seems the population is more than double the usual.

Most are tiger swallowtails, brilliant yellow and black. We must have plowed into a dozen or so as we drove to the lake and back. They are surprisingly strong and sometimes seem to have survived the collision, but that sounds anecdotal too.

Do you remember the Chaos Theory explained by the movement of a butterfly’s wing? I found it in two versions, but I won’t pretend I understand it.

The first version I came across sounds dismissive. It’s by James Gleick, journalist, essayist, theorist, born in 1954, the year after I graduated from high school:

“Tiny differences in input could quickly become overwhelming differences in output….In weather, for example, this translates into what is only half-jokingly known as the Butterfly Effect – the notion that a butterfly stirring the air today in Peking can transform storm systems next month in New York.” “Chaos [1987], Prologue.”

The other, by Ian Stewart in “Does God Play Dice? The Mathematics of Chaos” is this: “The flapping of a single butterfly's wing today produces a tiny change in the state of the atmosphere. Over a period of time, what the atmosphere actually does diverges from what it would have done. So, in a month's time, a tornado that would have devastated the Indonesian coast doesn't happen.

“Or maybe one that wasn't going to happen, does.”