Season changing ...

Daffodils, tulips, hyacinth, forsythia ... all are in bloom now or nearly blooming, in my neighborhood. Signs of spring, we say.

But these are foreign transplants, truth be told. The peoples who called this area home, before the boats of the Europeans ever dropped anchor, would not have recognized them.

No, for a Powhatan or a Monacan, the changing of the season from winter to spring would have been seen in the budding of puccoon (bloodroot); and what we now call Spring Beauty, Virginia bluebells, Mayapple and other ephemereals -- long gone by the arrival of summer.

In a corner of the woods near my home, I have reintroduced a few of those native flowers and every spring, I cherish the sight of them far more than spindly forsythia and home improvement store daffodils.

The first sign of Virginia bluebell, photographed yesterday, is not much, a few green leaves above the brown litter of autumn's detritus -- but just you wait until she blooms!

Garden Dreams

As I consider the lilies today ...

My yard needs so much work. I am rarely there, an absence not by choice.

I dream of colorful beds of flowers, a Thomas Kinkaide sort of fantasy. Reality is stubborn-as-hell wire grass everywhere and the never-ending struggle with Virginia's capricious weather.

I will be giving a clump of some very special daylilies to a relative this week, a unique cultivar that was given to me years ago by a couple who were passionate about hemerocallis.

Good gardeners are givers and thus they live on. In my little 1/4 acre, flowering almonds and apple trees were the gift of an old friend now lost in the fog of dementia. Fragrant thyme came to me from a friend who has now passed away. Honesty plant with its purple blooms and silvery seed disc, evokes the memory of my great Grandmother, who grew it out West -- my Great Grandmother who I have discovered this week was a player for Her turn-of-the-century high school Girls basketball team. Imagine that.

I will make room for lilies this month.

Reflections upon a Lily Show

I walked today amongst lilies
Of every size and color

I paused before a bloom of bold and brassy bronze
And then a bud barely there
demure and downcast

I almost wished to lift its petals
To face the sun again.

And then I realized as I drove away
This is metaphor for Woman
in all Her wonders
In the garden of our world.

Awakening

For obvious reasons, I haven't been into The Woodland that borders my home for several days. This evening, I finally felt well enough to take a few steps inside and check a very special place.

There, beneath a great oak tree, several years ago, I planted a native spring wildflower, bloodroot. While winter's chill still rules the land, this fragile but determined flower lifts its pale crown above the dry leaves, for but a few days, until the wind strips its petals away.

The flower has not yet emerged this year, but the tight green spear of its solitary leaf bud has just risen from the earth -- and what is this, a second spear rises close by it this time. So the little beauty has begun to multiply.

A gift

"Please take some," She said, as She does every time that I visit Her.

She is old. She recently had a terrible infection that caused Her to act quite strangely and caused us to wonder if She had developed dementia or Alzheimers.

But yesterday, She was Her normal self, offering me flowers from Her garden.

Her first gift was two apple tree seedlings, years ago. Last year, one of them bore fruit for the first time.

Earlier this year, She offered me sprigs of flowering almond --- something She grew up with in the Shenandoah Valley, She said.

"Please take some," She said, pointing a finger towards some tall and lovely plants crowding into the space by Her front door.

She called it Valencia.

I found the perfect spot for it by the low wall next to my carport.

But none of my books mention a flower by this name, and an Internet search found nothing, either.

Perhaps it is a hybrid name or I heard Her wrong.

Nonetheless, it is beautiful.

Thank You, my friend. Stay with us, please, a few more years.