Early bloomers

© harrington

Welcome, to My Minnesota and to the final question in the Where you at bioregional quiz. Here's question "20.    What spring wildflower is consistently among the first to bloom where you live?" I don't know if you consider skunk cabbage a wildflower, but it's among the early flowering wild plants in Minnesota, as is one of my favorites, the marsh marigold. We're fortunate to have a wonderful on-line resource in the Minnesota Wildflowers web site, that lists, among other things, our early flowering plants. It's amazing to me that there are so many plants ready to spring to life and bring color to the world as Winter is just barely letting go. To celebrate Spring Wildflowers and the completion of the last question in our quiz, let's relax and enjoy this poem by Reginald Gibbons.

Wildflowers

By Reginald Gibbons

Coleridge carefully wrote down a whole page   

of them, all beginning with the letter b.   

Guidebooks preserve our knowledge

of their hues and shapes, their breeding.

Many poems have made delicate word-chimes—

like wind-chimes not for wind but for the breath of man—

out of their lovely names.

At the edge of the prairie in a cabin

when thunder comes closer to thump the roof hard   

a few of them—in a corner, brittle in a dry jar   

where a woman’s thoughtful hand left them to fade—

seem to blow with the announcing winds outside   

as the rain begins to fall on all their supple kin

of all colors, under a sky of one color, or none.

I've been thinking about what we've learned (or haven't learned) from going through the Where you at quiz. One of my impressions is that we were asked a number (20+) of questions, many of which seemed disjointed. I'm going to take some time to go back through the answers and see if I can come up with a more coherent assessment. Thanks for listening. Come again when you can. Rants, raves and reflections, with poetry supplements, served here daily.