Poor Will's Almanack: January 14 - 20, 2020

The year seems to pause now, frozen in the middle of deep winter, but natural history and our own hope for spring continue to be the sum of our observations. Since there is no limit to what a person might watch and record, an endless winter is only in the eye of the beholder. Like every other season, winter accumulates, is the product of the sensations it causes, is only what we see it to be, is all that we see it to be. Even now, the landscape is part spring, part late fall, the grass greening in sheltered corners, the fallen leaves darkening in decay. Osage fruits are becoming speckled with age. Autumn berries, which measure the advance of the year in color and substance are thinning. Coralberries are becoming paler, Almost all the bittersweet hulls have fallen. Red winterberries lie scattered about the ground. Honeysuckle berries are completely gone. Early spring weeds like purple deadnettle and hemlock have expanded into mounds. Pussy willows have cracked a little, and multiflora