Cinco de Mayo
I am so
grateful for the improved weather! I hadn’t gotten out in the kayak in weeks,
due to cold/ wet/ rainy weather, and I was really missing it. However, I am
excited because all that rain helped to turn everything green, so the landscape
has been transformed since I was out last. Leaves are unfurled and flowers are
blooming! Ahh, Spring; my favorite time of year!
I am being optimistic in posting this photo of the yellow
iris (Iris pseudacorus) however, for I have yet to see it in bloom, but my journal
from last year records they were in bloom the 1st of May, so it
should be any day. I believe we had a warmer spring last year though; this year
has been unseasonably cool, perhaps that’s the reason for the delayed blooming.
I did notice chickweed in bloom, however; my friend Mira,
who is quite knowledgeable about wild foods, extols the virtues of this humble
plant, as does “Wildman” Steve Brill (Identifying and Harvesting Edible and
Medicinal Plants.) Brill is an authority on edible and medicinal plants,
and he refers to it as a “nutritional powerhouse”
“It provides vitamin C, rutin, biotin, choline, inositol,
PABA, vitamin B6, B12, vitamin D, and beta carotene. It’s also an excellent
source of the minerals magnesium, iron, calcium, potassium, zinc, phosphorous,
manganese, sodium, copper, and silicon.”
Amazing!
I was also thrilled to see a thick carpet of dandelions,
violets, yellow mustard, and gill-over-the-ground, for they were covered in
painted lady (Vanessa cardui) butterflies today! The sun shone briefly, and
they were in great abundance, but when I went back a short while later, and the
sky had clouded in the interim, they were nowhere to be seen! Where must they
hide? Are their wings folded and tucked discreetly as they cling below a
blossom? I waited ten minutes or so, hoping the sun would reappear, and with it
the painted ladies, but my wait, alas, was unrewarded!
The redwing blackbirds are in abundance, though; their sweet
trill is such music to my ears, not because it is a melodious call, but simply
for the association it represents: happy memories here on this lovely creek!
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