Did you know that in 1965 the U.S. Department of Agriculture planted a particular variety of lilac in more than seventy locations around the U.S. Northeast, to detect the onset of spring - in turn to be used to determine the appropriate timing of corn planting and the like? The records the USDA have kept show that those same lilacs are blooming as much as two weeks earlier than they did in 1965. April has, in a very real sense, become May.
That factoid comes out of a book called Early Spring by ecologist Amy Seidl. I kinda want to read it, even though I think it will probably scare the @%#$ out of me.
