Here at home, the snow is receding although it’s not all gone yet. Where it has gone, things are growing. And the honeybees are out searching for their own signs of spring. The first wildflowers are steershead and yellow bells. In the garden, chives, daffodils and parsley are all up and growing.
A few things I’ve seen in recent days.
The snow melted in a hurry once it got started and now everything says Spring! Including today, the howling winds.
We have had some really marvelous warm spring weather in the last week or two. Temperatures into the 70’s and light to steady breezes quickly melted the snow and out of the wet ground sprouted delightful tiny wildflowers. Lots of insects hatched attracting lots of birds and the honey bees have been busy on the willow catkins, gathering pollen for their hives. For nearly a week I’d go outside a couple times a day and search for my former nemesis wildflower – steershead or Dicentra uniflora – and I was delighted to find it. As the snow line descended down into our draw, I found more and more of tiny plants with flowers the size of a dime. How could they have been here all these years and I never saw them til last year. Were they tucked under the bitterbrush that burned in 2014? Or did the fire stimulate seeds that may have laid dormant?
Dicentra uniflora – Steershead or longhorn steer’s-head. As long as I have lived here, nearly seven years now, I have wanted to see this tiny wildflower. I told people I knew who had seen it that I’d really, really like to see one. I searched in vain on my own for it. Last year, with good advice from an ‘authority’ I scoured all over our hillside. He’d seen them on Signal Hill, the next road downstream from here and he thought I had a good chance of finding it. All to no avail. The tiny plant blooms as soon as the snow melts. When we left on our vacation, snow covered our hill. when we returned, it was all gone. I was overwhelmed with stuff to do but continued to look. Others had already seen it in different places. I knew it was out there. I photographed leaves and shared the images with others. No, they said, that’s not it. Darn. Another friend searched in the hills above Wenatchee. And then, yesterday. Yesterday, I found one still in bloom. Just feet from our driveway. In my front yard, so to speak. And today I found another. The blooms are faded, for sure, and setting seeds, but there they were. Very obvious. What a relief to be done with this search. I will probably see them everywhere next spring!
My Everyday Photos 