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!