First flower

Our yard’s first bloom of 2014 isn’t pasque flower or even dandelion. It is spring beauty.

These ephemerals weren’t on my wish list when we visited Prairie Restorations last year, but it was late summer so my mind was filled with dreams of purple prairie clover and blazing star. Plus, I had never before seen them for sale.

But as soon as we came across the spring beauty section, I knew I needed to have them. I remember learning about all the local wildflowers in fourth grade and then searching for these short-lived, pale pink-striped blooms to pick to decorate the backyard climbing tree. No matter that the six-packs for sale looked like only dirt; I knew that because it was August, the flowers and even the leaves were long gone for the season but would come back.

The “dirt” went into our shady garden, and uncharacteristically, I didn’t think of these native wildflowers again until I took the first trip to the backyard this week to see what survived the winter. My disappointment over not seeing bloodroot and trillium were forgotten when I saw one tiny pink flower, which has now turned into three, with many more buds getting ready to bloom.