the great greening

the trees are pretty much entirely leafed out at this point. but that does not mean we are at peak lushness. many plants in our rich soils will grow more than nine feet in a single season, most of which are only about knee high right now.

late bloomers

we have almost all of minnesota’s native ferns on our property with the sad exception of bracken ferns which we have tried and so far failed to introduce. as of late may, the ostrich ferns are already waist high, yet my lady ferns are still just filling out. yes, ferns have seasons just like flowers. my interrupted ferns emerge first, followed quickly by ostrich, and cinnamon. lady, sensitive, and maidenhair ferns come along almost a month later. i know this because i tend to get a little excited (read hyper-focused) about them in early spring. interestingly, i have no idea in what order they die-back come autumn. i guess i have lost interest in them by them. by then i am no longer craving green, like i do in april. on the contrary. i am ready for a break from the green tunnel i have been looking through for three months.

lady fern fern shoots

against a wall of green

yes, my world has greened. everything is almost completely leafed out. the ferns are already waist high, and yet, this over-wintered burdock is what caught my attention today. after nine years of taking daily photos, struggling to find subjects for five cold months of the year when our ground is blanketed in snow, i still continue to be drawn to these spare, sculptural stems, even when the earth is offering me an abundance of other choices. when the green of late spring and summer reach peak density, it actually gets hard for me to see any one of them individually. it’s just one wall of green. and so, burdock burrs, my annoyingly constant winter companions, suddenly catch my eye again. hello there. i forgot how handsome you were…

over-wintered burdock stem

of a certain age

i turned 57 today. does that make me “une femme d’un certain âge?” these flowers have been hanging on my wall for weeks, waiting for the right day to photograph them. they too are of a certain age. showing some wear, perhaps. but holding up well. i’ll take it.

dried blue scilla flowers

solitary show stopper

my husband, steve, and i have been especially attentive to our woodland this year. last spring, to pass the time during quarantine, i had cleared our woods of the invasive shrub called buckthorn, which had made a tangled mess of the understory. i did it to open up the views into the woods, and to allow dappled sunshine in. what i didn’t expect was this year’s explosion of spring ephemerals–those demure native wildflowers that only bloom for a few weeks in april and may before the trees leaf out. we’ve found an astounding number of them so far: hepatica, bloodroot, marsh marigold, wild ginger, dutchman’s breeches, trout lilies, wild geranium, bellworts, anemones, violets, periwinkles, jack in the pulpits, mayapples, trilliums, and now this solitary shooting star. one of the most elegant of them all.

shooting star wildflower (Primula sect. Dodecatheon)