What the Last Week of April Teaches Us (If We’re Paying Attention)

I walked the north trail yesterday morning and counted seven different shades of green. That sounds like something a person makes up to sound poetic, but I stopped and actually counted them. The redbuds are finishing their show, dropping those papery pink petals onto the forest floor like confetti from a party nobody told us about. Meanwhile, the dogwoods are just hitting their stride, and the understory is waking up in layers — sassafras unfurling those mitten-shaped leaves, spicebush already leafed out and fragrant if you brush against it.

Late April in the Ozarks is the week when winter finally stops arguing. You can feel the soil warming under your feet if you stand still long enough.

The Squirrel’s Ear Thermometer

My grandmother used to call this the “planting by the signs” week. Old-timers in these hills watched the oak leaves — when they reached the size of a squirrel’s ear, it was safe to plant corn. I used to think that was just charming folklore until I learned the science behind it. Oak leaves that size mean soil temperature has consistently reached about 50 degrees at four inches deep. The squirrel’s ear wasn’t superstition. It was a thermometer that didn’t need batteries.

This is what I love about knowledge that got passed down through families and neighbors and church suppers for two hundred years. It works. It keeps working. And most of us lost access to it somewhere between our great-grandparents and us.

An Observation Project for This Week

If you’ve got kids at home — whether you’re homeschooling or just trying to get them outside before summer hits — this is the perfect week for a simple observation project. Pick one tree in your yard or neighborhood. Any tree. Visit it every day this week and notice what changes. Is it leafing out? Are the leaves getting bigger? What color are they today versus yesterday? Have them draw it or photograph it or just tell you what they see.

What you’re teaching them isn’t botany, exactly. You’re teaching them to pay attention. That’s the skill underneath every other skill — the one that makes all the others possible.

Building a Sense of Home

I didn’t grow up with someone handing me this kind of knowledge. I found it later, in gardens first, then in books, then in the actual dirt of this place. Some of us inherit a sense of home. Some of us build it from scratch. Both ways count.

That’s part of why we keep the farmhouse open for overnight stays. Not as something separate from the Foundation’s work, but as part of it. When you wake up here in late April and walk out to see the mist rising off the hollow, you’re not just visiting. You’re participating in something we’re trying to preserve — the experience of noticing, of slowing down, of letting the land teach you what it knows.

Your Homework

If you can’t make it to the preserve this week, here’s your homework. Find one tree. Watch it for seven days. Write down what you see in plain language, the way you’d describe it to a friend. By the end of the week, you’ll know that tree differently than you knew it before.

And next April, when you see it again, you’ll remember what it looked like this time. That’s how it starts — one tree, one week, one season at a time.