In springtime, all things are possible. Everything around you that is alive is imbued right now with the same hopeful energy.

I’ve been writing this column for over a year and a half and every plant that I have highlighted and celebrated evolved and co-evolved in the bioregion of Southern Appalachia.

To get through the winter, some plants go underground to take advantage of the earth’s insulation, while others stay above ground and protect themselves in other ways.

Hunkered down for the long winter, wrapped in multiple layers and prepared for the cold, I have a lot in common with the flower and leaf buds of woody plants.

At the highest elevations of the Southern Appalachians grow two evergreen trees that give the Balsam Mountains their name — red spruce (Picea rubens) and Fraser fir (Abies fraseri).

Creeping along the forest floor is a group of native plants that look like mosses, but aren’t mosses.

Whoever first wrote down the phrase, “You reap what you sow” was definitely not a farmer or gardener. I’ve started following that phrase with, “…if you’re lucky.”

Want to hear a corny joke about an oak tree? That was it. 

This time of year, as the wind rustles the leaves and the shadows begin to elongate as the sun lingers lower on the horizon, the veil between the worlds seems to grow thinner and thinner.

Every year at the beginning of fall, an amazing thing happens in North America, and the Southern Appalachian Mountains.