pameladean

Eric and I try to visit the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden at least once a week from the time that it opens in April until one day we go and the mosquitoes have taken over.

Last year was extremely confusing. The late blizzard followed by serious cold and a very slow warming meant that it was May before the garden opened and all the ephemerals were horrified at how late it was and were bursting out and blooming all at the same time with wild abandon.

This year has been much more deliberate. The garden opened on April 8th, having originally announced an April 1 opening but then postponed it because the trails were still snowy and icy. We can't ordinarily go on a weekday, but Eris is between jobs, and we are trying to take advantage of that extra freedom. So on a Monday afternoon, away we went. We weren't expecting to see much blooming or even growing. The first trip, in a properly-conducted Spring, is just to look at the bones of the land, the lovely growth habit of the enormous white oak trees, the light slanting all the way from the tiny meadow to the tiny marsh, unimpeded by leaves. And that's what we saw.

Also, to our delight, the snow trillium, a plant so early that we had missed it for years, was blooming. It's a tiny plant with three leaves veined from stem to tip like a ladyslipper orchid leaf, and white three-petalled flowers facing upwards, with a yellow center. There are several clumps at a place where three paths meet. The larger clump is a little back from the path, but there's a small one right in between the roots of a tree and almost on the path. Here it is, if I've done things correctly.

Two snow trillium plants, one blooming

We had also discussed how we would probably not be able to walk all the way through the little marsh, since the end at which the Friends of the Garden had not yet put in a new boardwalk would be muddy if not actually flooded. But lo! they had put in the new boardwalk. In these pre-leaf days it makes a shining curvy path through a landscape still largely gray and brown, with a few patches of red-osier dogwood or arbor vitae for contrast. We checked the ironwood and the witch hazel, but neither was blooming. There were almost no shrubs even starting to leaf out, although the evergreen of the single mountain laurel bush and the vast patch of periwinkle on its log-littered slope were welcome bits of green in the monochromatic background.

Here's some red-stemmed dogwood and scattered patches of moss doing their best to provide some color:

red-osier dogwood stems and moss