Native plants for a Cape Cod garden

I am estimating that the biological spring is some 20 days ahead of schedule this year. The bulbs are pushing through the soil and crocus and snowbell are flowering in the sun lit meadows and yards.  Last year I did not start talking about spring like events until mid March…  And it’s not just happening on solid ground, either – the Atlantic ocean and Cape Cod Bay waters are a good 3 to 4 degrees warmer than what one would expect this time of year.  The Cape Cod Times reported on whales feeding off Provincetown just last week, and a friend of mine observed whales off coast guard beach a week before that…  Climate shift? Anomaly? Cycle pattern?  Who knows.  In hindsight 30 years from now our weather experiences will be a chapter in some science book, or there will be nothing at all to write about.  All I know for sure is that we can’t think about life and our planet in absolutes – things are changing and shifting all the time, as has been demonstrated in the distant past.  And I’m starting to understand that changes can happen abruptly, sometimes without much forewarning.  The dice are rolled and we deal with the aftermath – adapt or die.  Nature is not some museum quality piece of art that we can hope to maintain in an artificial frozen state.  For one, we are not mere observers, and we interact with it and invoke change. Secondly, “wildness” does what it will in unpredictable ways regardless of the buttons we imagine we can push. I could learn a lot from the two coyotes I observed late last night in the cemetery near route 28 and West Yarmouth Road.  Survival has a lot to do with staying afoot, knowing your surroundings and making the best of ever changing circumstances.  Too many of us have stopped paying attention.