You might be forgiven for thinking it was lavender, but then you hear it is actually an invasive species, and that takes all the fun out of it.  But only for a while.  Then things get better again, and the purple loosestrife begs you to look, and to notice, but not to pluck or bulldoze or scythe. The thing is, it adapts to all climates, and makes itself to home equally on abandoned railway lines--where it is called railway weed, or in the wetlands--where it pops to distract you from herons nesting in bark stripped trees, or in an open field, where it is the lodge pole pine among its peers. Not to be confused with butterfly bush--although it is tempting--purple loosestrife is also different from fireweed, which is the floral emblem of the Yukon.

The other day a robin flew across the road in front of me, barely clearing the curb on the other side.  He beat his wings and gained some height, but bobbed and glided, only to beat his wings again and crest an inch or two higher, scalloping from A to B. Not an English robin, mind, which is a tiny little bird. But our sort of robin, which is actually a thrush--even if it has, more or less, the same ochre markings of its English cousin. Barn swallows or swifts do the same beat and glide, but they fly higher, and when they thread their way through trusses in barns to nest in the gables they look like bats. Sparrows, with their ermine spotted feathers--that have yet to adorn even an Hawaiian King's academic robes--are precision flyers, threading the eyes of chain link fences.  Rustic regal, shabby chic. But these are not all the birds of Spring. When we were still having a series of false springs (Hemingway, from the Moveable Feast that is Paris), the Braxton H...