View from the Mountain: The greening of the valley and mountains

It is the start of spring, and the Roanoke Valley is not going to disappoint us. The grass is turning green, the Bradford pear trees are in full bloom, and the daffodils are probably at their peak.

Certainly they look a little perkier than the ones in my post, Damp Daffodils, from March 27, 2005.

While today the temperatures only got into the mid to upper sixties, the forecast for the next week has the Roanoke area getting to seventy by the end of the week.

I wish it had come a week earlier. We drove up from the beach earlier in the week. Just before we left, we had been enjoying some very good beach weather which required shorts. When I got out of the car in Martinsville to pump some gas, it was pretty obvious that the temperature outside the vehicle had dropped around thirty degrees.

While the temperature is all over the place both at the beach and in the mountains, the swings are becoming more tolerable. Also a cool morning is a lot easier to take with blooming trees and bright sunshine.

I was kayaking on the river by our house earlier in the week. It was great to be out on the water, and it was especially nice to see some fish jumping. Before we left, I also saw some strawberry plants blooming down at the coast.

It is no surprise that the grass is starting to grow quickly in Roanoke. Some eager beavers have already mowed. Since I have been keeping records for the last four years, we have done our first mowing of the year in Roanoke sometime between March 24 and March 29.

From the looks of our yard, we will once again fall right in that range. We have a few spots that already could use mowing, but by the middle of next week, the whole yard should be ready for a clipping.

After everyone has done that first mowing, the Valley will be truly green, and I suspect also decorated with Redbuds. Today we saw the first Redbuds starting to show some color along Route 419 between Oak Grove Plaza and the Post Office.

Early spring in the Shenandoah and Roanoke valleys is about as pretty as spring gets. A few years ago I issued an invitation to Canadians to visit in early spring. While our Ace Hardware that I mentioned in the post is long gone, spring is still outrageously beautiful here in Virginia and North Carolina.

April is usually a great month in the south. You can enjoy all the blooming things, and by then some fresh produce is starting to hit the market. Once you have tired of the beauty in the mountain valleys, you can head to the coast.

Since we have been spending time on the North Carolina coast, we have had fresh local strawberries before the middle of April each year. It is also in April when the beautiful flowers of Tryon Palace in New Bern, NC are at their peak. We visited April 20 last year and just missed the tulips but caught lots of other flowers and plenty of warmth.

If you cannot stretch your visit until the middle of April, you can always swing by Newport, NC and visit their Barbecue Festival on April 4 which is billed as the largest "whole-hog" barbecue contest in the US. I can vouch for the deliciousness of their eastern NC style barbecue.

If you can make the visit last into April, northerners have been know to stick their feet in the southern ocean water before the end of April.

In fact the two people in picture in the post almost had to be dragged off of the beach that April day.