This week I’ve been heading to the woods every chance I get to see the spring wildflowers emerge and bloom, and still spring is springing up too fast for me to keep up.
That seems to be the way of life. Either you’re waiting and waiting for something to happen—like spring—or suddenly, the awaited event has arrived and time is moving much too quickly.
“I will be the gladdest thing under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
And not pick one.”
– Edna St. Vincent Millay
This morning as I looked out the window, the trees across the pond and in our yard looked like they were covered in a haze of light green. And there were at least 8 pairs of wood ducks swimming in the pond! The daffodils are starting to bloom! That’s what several days of 70 degree weather do. Everything speeds up, as anxious to grow and become as we humans are.
Green haze in our backyard
Wednesday, I went to Big Willow Park to check to see if the bloodroot flowers had emerged. I have been enjoying a colony of these flowers in a certain spot in these woods for many years. A week ago, when Jon and I walked there, we could see no signs of the flowers. Wednesday, they were up and in bloom.
What a difference a week can make!
I was surprised at how few bloodroot plants and flowers there were this year. Usually there is a whole hillside of the flowers. This year there were a few here and there, but many patches of brown leaves in between where no plants grew. It was a vivid reminder that we are in a mild drought in Minnesota and that although I enjoyed the winter because we had little snow, the plants that rely on that snow as cover and protection did not fare so well.
When I look at the photographs that I made on Wednesday, I can almost shrug my shoulders and think, “What’s so special about bloodroot?”
Yet they are my favorite wildflower and always make me happy when I see them.
“I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.
– Claude Monet
There is something about the way the bloodroot flowers seem to pop into life so quickly through the leaf litter on the woodland floor, the flowers blooming before the leaves even unfurl from around the stem of the flower that appeals to me greatly. The bloodroot leaves themselves are endlessly interesting with their lobed appearance and texture.
Making the photos was a core strength workout without any special equipment. Crouching down to get close to the flowers, shading them with my big reflector, making sure that I didn’t step on any emerging plants on a wooded hillside, and holding the camera steady to get just the right angle, all showed me how strong one needs to be to do nature photography.
Who can say why there is that spark of love for one thing and not another. All I know is that…
I love wildflowers! But I especially love bloodroot flowers!
“When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else. Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see
it whether they want to or not.”
– Georgia O’Keeffe
I did not grow up in a family that greatly appreciated wildflowers. My parents were pragmatic farmers who worked hard day in and day out. It was amazing that my mother spent as much energy on her flower beds as she did, given the hard work that filled every day of her life. Even in the her big vegetable garden she always planted a couple of rows of flowers, along with tending several flower beds around and near the house. But her flowers were tame flowers, not wildflowers. When I was 12 and decided that I wanted my own flower bed, she helped me dig a spot under the trees and we filled it with nearly wild flowers—columbine, violets, larkspur, and a couple of iris. I loved tending my very own 2 by 3 foot plot of flowers.
It wasn’t until I was an adult and met my mother-in-law, Marie, that I discovered my appreciation for wildflowers. Marie retired to live in her cabin by a man-made lake in Iowa. Jon and I spent many weekends at the cabin, Jon helping with outdoor landscaping, me just enjoying the paths in the woods and the trees all around. Marie invited me along on a couple of wildflower walks with a naturalist who lived nearby and I was hooked. From then on I looked forward to spring for a new reason—spring ephemerals!
I was in a Wildflower Daze.
Now, I still love woodlands and flowers but I am also interested in landscaping with native plants, permaculture, growing habitat for wildlife.
What lights you up, swells your heart, and makes it sing? What fills you with wonder?
May you walk in beauty.
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