Yesterday, before it started to snow, I noticed that a branch of our oldest sarvis bloomed. The younger ones haven’t come yet. This old tree was badly damaged in a powerline cut about thirty years ago, but it still puts on a nice display.
I can’t recall it ever blooming the morning of a snow storm, but it’s not unusual for the temperatures to go below freezing when it is in bloom.
Our younger sarvis trees haven’t bloomed yet. Sometimes they come first, and sometimes the old one comes first.
For the old mountain people, this was the sign of spring. It signaled that the year had truly turned, and that spring was indeed here.
Here’s a post from The Blind Pig & The Acorn that quotes the late local historian Ethelene Jones and includes a poem by Byron Herbert Reese on the sarvis bloom:
https://blindpigandtheacorn.com/spring-in-appalachia-the-service-sarvis-sorbus-tree-blooms/
There are a lot of etymologies of “sarvis” – which is Juneberry or Serviceberry up north – but as Ethelene notes, it was used for altar decorations if the dogwoods hadn’t come before Easter.