Day By Day in the Woodland Garden

There are a lot of nits I could pick with the various apps that litter my phone. And that includes the camera and photo apps. But my favorite features are that they date the photos, and they list the location. If I can’t recall where that favored piece of public art is, I can search the photo app and find out the place and date when it was taken. They bookmark the shots for me.

This time of year, I find the date of the photos particularly useful. In early spring, I wander the woodland garden looking for the first appearances of the early springtime flowers. Today, for instance, Sanguinary ( blood root) is just opening its first flowers. Not too far away, the bronze and green leaves of trout lily stand out against the dead leaves of fall. In a couple of days, their tiny yellow flowers, like larger lilies except tiny, will pop up.

One of the things I can look at it a comparison of the dates on which the blooks occur. But all these little patches of early wild flowers started with a single plant procured from a local conservation district organization that regularly offered New England wildflowers for sale. The single plants have now spread into small groups. It’s exciting because some of the flowers are uncommon to rare in my area -except in my tiny woodland garden.

Today I also saw the first trillium popping its three leaves up, a lungwort, and the spice bush just about ready to open its tiny, bare-naked flowers. It’s part of a spring ritual for me.

To someone not knowing what’s going on, it’s just Lou stumbling around his garden with his eyes on the ground. But for me, spring is revealing itself slowly, day by day, flower by flower.