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From harsh winter to budding spring

Boone County’s land and plant life are transformed by every season

ZACHARY SIEBERT

Crown vetch blooms in a fallow cornfield at Eagle Bluffs Wetlands near McBaine.

By ZACHARY SIEBERT

May 4, 2008 | 9:07 p.m. CST

We met the first April day of sun and pleasant temperatures. An appointment had been made with April’s glorious potential. Spring had undeniably arrived.

In Boone County, we are blessed with a climate that provides the opportunity to experience all four seasons. We get the best and the worst — the harsh discomfort of summer and winter and the sweet solace of fall and spring. These extremes draw our attention to the land.

In the winter, the terrain is stripped bare of the thick, omnipresent vegetation of Boone County summers. It becomes stripped of color, and wild areas wither down to their skeletal forms. The landscape becomes a study in contrast.

In the spring, we begin to think of new beginnings. The juxtaposition of the old and the young is never clearer. Grays become violets. Browns morph into greens. Jagged edges are overgrown by lush mosaics of vegetation. The sun ascends into our lives bringing warmer temperatures, and the land illustrates its arrival.

The subtly different patterns of this mid-Missouri spring surface long before the peaks of panoramic landscapes fill out in green, as wild honeysuckle flowers turn dead cornfields into passing paradises.

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