Now that organism is planted. Bullfrogs crawled out of South Bay at the end of April and, still bronzed from the bay bottom mud where they wintered, they warm up and slowly hop up to the ponds. When stunned and sun starved like that, you can admire bullfrogs just like you do the spring flowers. And like the stunned frog, spring flowers are close to the ground. I pride myself on not picking them thinking they are too beautiful and delicate to be picked (perhaps losing my frog analogy here)
And they are too low to the ground -- like a frog. Of course the spring beauties pictured above come out in April as do trout lilies and hepatica. But this cold April all the flowers seemed tardy. In 2010 the trilliums were out in bunches by the 19th.
This was the state of the trilliums this year on April 25.
At that time the trout lily was grounded beauty of the moment.
Trillium was out the first week of May
And some blooms were fading to pink in the third week of May.
So I think we had a short season for trilliums. I usually get obsessive about special clumps in hidden grottos that try to throw huge white blossoms at you. Look at what I could stand and admire on April 29, 2010:
As individually beautiful as trillium are, they are most striking en masse and best seen just as it gets dark almost bleaching the usually somber hills.
But this year, I must confess, their marching over hill and dale was not quite as dramatic. Take a look at this charge of white in 2007.
But this relative mild year for flowers had some surprises for me. One of the games I play in May is try to frame photos with as many different blooms as possible, and for doing that, this May was the best ever.
Now that's an underwhelming photo unless you have gazed on flowers like this for 19 years and never seen a red trillium and a white trillium flanking a sessile bellwort. Ironically, several days of dry weather made combinations blooms more striking. For example the first violets had trillium for neighbors.
Seeing the blue violets immediately prompts me to search for some blue hepatica before that early flower completely disappears.
I caught those beauties on May 5. Strange how easy it is to adjust to the fading of such delicate blooms. One April I fancied I could sit and see the first hepatica bloom (white) unfurl. It might be more to the point to sit and watch the last hepatica bloom fade soaking in its delicate beauty. But by that time I am anxious to see the yellow and white violets. The latter were out by the 19th.
At the end of May, my conceit about not picking spring flowers because I can't bend down that low ends. The bushes begin blooming, principally clusters of white flowers. Not far from the white violets, I saw a blooming elderberry bush.
Usually at this time of year Leslie does all the planting, but to make it harder to see the animals in the Deep Pond from the road, I searched for small white pines that I could transplant. I first made the stupid assumption that pines up on rocky knolls would be easiest to transplant not knowing how pine roots can get a strangle hold on rocks, but my snooping around one wooded knoll did afford me a view of this delicate bush's blooms, which I have yet to identify.
I found plenty of small pines easy to dig out in our very wet central valley. It crossed my mind that I should do some serious botanizing. One year I did find a small orchid on our land. But I checked my files and found that I had found that in September during an early hunt for blue gentian. All to say, in spring let the flowers come to you, and the seeds. Maples seemed, as they always do, out of control in their seed making.
Since we spent so many days on our land soaking in the bird songs and frog choruses, I didn't make my usual tour of Wellesley Island to see how many flowers that I see on our land can also be seen there. However on one boat trip we saw one of the glories of the island that are not so well presented on our land, the shad bush blossoms.
Now that's an underwhelming photo unless you have gazed on flowers like this for 19 years and never seen a red trillium and a white trillium flanking a sessile bellwort. Ironically, several days of dry weather made combinations blooms more striking. For example the first violets had trillium for neighbors.
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