ie A DADO Neste eo 3 
pring Song 
By HAL BORLAND 
EVERY YEAR I listen for spring 
peepers toward the end of March, 
and by the middle of April I ex- 
pect to see swamp maples in bloom 
making the lowlands blush with 
spring. By then, the red-wing 
blackbirds are loud in the stream- 
side willows and the migrant robins 
are strutting about our home pas- 
ture and eating the first minor 
hatch of insects there. And by then 
most real gardeners are outdoors, 
getting their fingers into the soil 
again, renewing contact. With any 
weather luck at all, up here in the 
hills we have peas planted, the first 
lettuce bed in, a row of carrots and 
one of beets, one of onion sets and 
maybe even a row of green beans 
in the ground. We may have frost 
as late as Memorial Day up here, 
but if it doesn’t come we'll have 
very early beans. If it does, we'll 
re-plant. Some people plant peas 
in mid-March, but that is sheer 
nonsense. Peas planted in March 
just lie there and shiver and sulk 
till it really warms up. 
BUT HERE we are, on a bright, 
blue-sky March day, watching for 
new shoots in the perennial bed 
on one side of the garden fence and 
for seedlings on the other side. And 
wondering what new hazards are 
in store for the environment this 
year, what new “cure-alls” are go- 
ing to be thrust upon us to the 
ultimate and long-lasting damage 
to the ecology. We hope the reap- 
pearance of the peepers is a good 
sign, and we listen for the chorus 
of birdsong to prove that our fea- 
thered allies are still with us. But 
we do look apprehensively at the 
sky, hoping that rusty-smudgy 
cloud of smog won’t reach this far 
from the metropolitan industrial 
centers at least until July. We look 
at the river, just across the road, 
and wonder when the promised 
clean-up upstream will begin to 
clarify, if not actually purify, its 
odorous, murky water. Then we 
look at the garden again. 
SOIL, the rootbed of life, the 
source of all the plant growth on 
this earth except seaweed. A fun- 
damental of existence. Wipe out 
all animal life, and as long as the 
earth remains there will be plants. 
Wipe out the plants and we all die, 
all of us animal creatures, if not of 
starvation then of suffocation for 
lack of the oxygen that the green 
The majority of readers will 
recognize the name here of Hal 
Borland, 1968 winner of the 
John Burroughs Medal for dis- 
tinguished nature writing and 
author of 14 books published 
by Lippincott. Among them are 
“Countryman — A Summary 
of Belief,” ‘Hill Country 
Harvest,” “Our Natural World,” 
“King of Squaw Mountain,” 
and “The Dog Who Came to 
Stay.” Mr. Borland resides in 
rural Connecticut and practices 
what he preaches. 
