First wildflower for this spring

On March 8th along Balcones Woods Dr. I took my first spring wildflower pictures. The subjects in all of them were ten-petal anemones, Anemone berlandieri. That’s hardly surprising, given that we occasionally observe the species blooming here as soon as late January, with February being more common—but then our sustained sub-freezing weather in mid-February delayed the flowering not only of the anemones but also of other early native wildflowers we might expect to see by the end of February. But a delay is still only a delay, and on a nature walk yesterday I found four other native wildflower species budding and blooming. In Austin now there’s no doubt that spring has sprung.

And here’s a related quotation by Wendell Berry from Sabbaths, 1987:

I dream of a quiet man
who explains nothing and defends
nothing, but only knows
where the rarest wildflowers
are blooming, and who goes,
and finds that he is smiling
not by his own will.

© 2021 Steven Schwartzman