The First Bluet of the Season
After a cold, wet, and dreary January I'm ready for all the spring blooms I can find.
I saw my first bluet of the year over the weekend.
The last few weeks I have been compiling a spreadsheet of places to hike and plants to see for an offline project I’m working on and it has given me major spring fever. I NEED TO SEE FLOWERS NOW! Well, that’s what my brain is telling me. Give me flowers, give me sunny days, take me outside! No more cold fronts and hard freezes and certainly no more weeks of rain, rain, rain. We’re almost over the former part of that sentence but well, here in southeast Texas we will most certainly see lots of rain again in the not too distant future.
Thankfully Mother Nature rewarded my spring fever with a tease of spring with that bluet. Little does she know I’ve plans to start chasing down every early spring ephemeral I can find starting later this week.
I’m really popping in here for two reasons.
1: To tell you to look for the signs of the changing seasons. They are probably there and you aren’t paying attention. Sure, we have nearly two months until the vernal equinox but we all know seasons don’t exactly fit the calendar, especially here in Texas. Take a walk. Notice. Revel in the sun when it is out!
2: It’ll be another week or two before a “real” essay is out. I’ve been working on several offline projects plus trying to enjoy life, so essays here have been on the backburner. I’m working on my next Galveston essay but I’m still brainstorming and doing some research. Sometimes the essays come into my brain and I can write them out in a few hours, other times they take weeks to formulate. These are proving to be harder to put down on “paper”. How do you capture 22-26 year old events and emotions?
So, hold tight. I’ll be back soon. Maybe even next week.
Don’t forget to go for that nature walk!
PS: Tell me what signs of spring you are seeing, no matter where you are. Are birds migrating yet? Any spring ephemerals poking their heads above ground? Or are you piled under snow? Let me know in the comments or reply via email!
Misti writes regularly at Oceanic Wilderness and In the Weeds. She hosts one podcast, Orange Blaze: A Florida Trail Podcast, and recently retired The Garden Path Podcast.
I was tempted to say we’re in the thick of ice, but then drove by a smaller river and was shocked to see open running water at some bends. Makes me happy (babbling brook!) and sad (climate).
Thank you for that tiny flower.