Every spring is busy, interesting and challenging its own way. This has been my April so far.

As I usually do, I was out scouting for pasqueflowers early. I like to keep track of the first blooms, and this year, after a warm stretch, I saw blooms on March 31, the earliest ever in my memory. And then 5 days later we were in a blizzard warning for up to a foot of snow, a little of which you see below. As blizzards go it was pretty wimpy, as April blizzards usually are, with less than 6″ of snow and never reaching white-out conditions. I doubt those first pasques will have seed to gather, though they are tough little SOB’s. The snow melted in 3-4 days with 70 degree weather returning, but you get the idea of the roller coaster of April. Spring, glorious spring!

We (Ben Lardy and I) had a plan developed last year to execute a burn on part of a 40 acre native pasture, to then topdress it with a variety of species which were no longer there, or for which we hoped to augment populations, and then to hope to help germination and establishment with using our renter’s cows to eat the non-native grasses to lessen competition for any new seedlings that would try to start. We ended up with a perfect day for a burn with a light breeze and low humidity. This all combined to create a safe, but very complete burn. We were able to get two sizable hills with some adjoining mesic areas burned in a couple very stress free hours of work (I use the term “we” very loosely here. I mostly patrolled the edges, walking the perimeter to make sure the fire didn’t burn past the back burn and the mowed border). There are three zones to seed, two in the photo below. At the base of the hills is a band of mesic soils which have porcupine grass (Stipa spartea) grading into brome, Above that along the crest of the hills is a xeric zone of thin soils which is mostly blue grama and a variety of forbs, with the demarcation very obvious in the picture below.

The most important goal for the fire is to experiment and improve the environment shown above. Both hills have level tops on them with soils that are on the better end of xeric, good enough that they support brome. They are droughty enough, however, that the brome does not exclude a wide variety of xeric adapted forbs and grasses. Though we will add seed, much is already there This type of site is found in all my prairies, both native and restored, constituting perhaps 20-30% of the total. Anything we can learn here might be transferable to a lot of other areas on the farm. Can we hold back the competitive properties of the brome enough with burning and grazing to give the 50 other species that are adapted to those sites a chance to spread and flourish? Will adding new seed be worth the expense? Are there other species we might harm while trying to help the already existing native forbs and grasses? We don’t want to be so focused on limiting brome growth that we lose sight of the big picture, The Hippocratic Oath instructs physicians: “First, do no harm!”

The first step has been taken. The next step will occur next week when we will spread a lot of seed of a wide variety of species over the 10 acres that were burned. After that comes the hard part: deciding when and how hard to graze it. It is possible we won’t graze it until September, when the fall resurgence of brome growth appears and we have had the opportunity to gather seed from all the existing wildflowers that are likely to use the burn as an opportunity to procreate. On the other hand, if the spring stays dry, limiting forb seed production, perhaps we will do some late May to mid-June grazing to get a second opportunity to drain the underground bud bank of brome. All of this was one of the two major goals of the year, as stated in the recent post: “The Plan for 2026”.

Finally, above is a picture of my cute girlfriend of the last 46 years leading me on an exploratory walk along the wooded creek in the 45 acre pasture where her horses graze. She kept finding the basal leaves of different forbs coming out of the ground, asking me what they were. I think that I was able to identify three, which was about the same number of species that she was able to identify. We both know prairie plants, not woodland plants. We wandered clumsily up and down steep riverbanks remembering how much more nimbly we navigated the slopes and brush when we were younger. This too is the promise of spring, a reward for waiting out the snow and cold to go on a date hiking through brush with Linda. That was our first date 46 years ago, too; first we cooked hotdogs over a little fire and then we went for a hike at the state park near the college town where we met. I was not very good at impressing girls back then, but I found the way to impress the right one. Our 46th spring together on the way to 47 I hope.

Cherish your time outdoors in spring; 46 doesn’t have to lead to 47. Cherish your time with loved ones. Last weekend I was visiting my daughter and family in the Twin Cities. After dinner and visiting I was backing out of their driveway when Diane came out with her two and a half year old daughter Lily. I realized that I hadn’t said a decent goodbye to Lily, so I stopped the car and got out to wave and blow a kiss. She gave a little yell of joy and sprinted to give me the biggest hug that a tiny girl can give. It makes me cry to think of it now, the beauty beyond imagining. One more example of the promise of spring. A two year old is spring personified, bursting with energy and possibilities. And now, on to May.