3/16/08

9:00 AM. 21 degrees, barometer predicts sunny skies. Wind NE, calm at ground level. Skies mostly cloudy, clouds high and moving in from the NE.
On our walk this morning I noticed a quaking aspen, Populous tremuloides, beginning to flower, on 9th and Rittenhouse. It is a bit early, but it is in a sunny location along the road. The breaking flower buds, male and female on different trees, look much like pussy willow buds, as they are in the willow family (salicaceae). Having read Thoreau again this winter I have become much more observant or perhaps it is that being yet another spring older, I have slowed my pace enough to accommodate better observation. Whatever. There are now 24 trees tapped at the Larsen's sugarbush, with some of them running already.