Bloodroot

On this slow morning, the thing to do was to traipse about in the woods for just a little bit while avoiding household chores. We have a nice variety of wildflowers by the back fence - spread there from a neighbors garden years and years ago. I remember when she (the neighbor) directed my then little girl to take good care of the flowers since they had spread to our family's property and were now our responsibility. Her words were the beginning of an interest in flower gardening for little Cameron who is now a wife and mommy. Every spring these flowers still feel like a gift. I love to wander to that back corner to see what is coming up; what is in bloom. Remarkably, even after all these years, I don't have a good mental inventory of the flowers that we see each year, but I'm fairly sure I haven't noticed Bloodroot before. Maybe that's just because it's so delicate and short-lived, and I've just missed it. Anyway, what a treat to happen upon it today.

Found in The Secrets of Wildflowers, Jack Sanders:

Milky Way

What time the earliest ferns unfold
And meadow cowslips count their gold,
A countless multitude they stood,
A Milky Way within the wood.
White are my dreams, but whiter still,
The bloodroot on the lonely hill,
Lovely and pure my visions rise,
To fade before my yearning eyes,
But on that day I thought I trod
'Mid the embodied dreams of God.
Tho' frail those flowers, tho' brief their way,
They sanctified one perfect day,
And tho'the summer may forget,
In my rapt soul they blossom yet.

--Danske Dandridge (1854-1919)