May Day

On my way home from seeing patients today, I stopped in a nature area with woodland trails to find some wild flowers on the first day of May. My woods are sorely lacking in this essential part of spring. (I will have a few flowers eventually--trillium are getting ready to bloom, there are a few may apple umbrellas, and there is a nice patch of false lily of the valley that is getting ready to bloom, as well as plenty of wild violets.) 

But sadly the main thing you see when walking through my woods is millions and millions of tiny garlic mustard seedlings. It is enough to make you just want to sit down and cry. We will spend many evenings the over the next five years pulling this plant that is the curse of the woodland. Garlic Mustard seeds last five years in the soil. Last year we didn't let a single plant on our property go to seed and that is our plan for the as long as we own this piece of land.

(Garlic mustard seedlings)

Once the garlic mustard is somewhat under control, my plan is to introduce the native wild flowers back into the woods--spring beauties, jack in the pulpit, hepaticas, trout lilies, blood root, and all the other delightful little flowers of the woodland that turn the spring woods into a fairyland. 

So some flowers from the nature area--

There were thousands of blue hepaticas--I have never seen that many hepaticas in my life in one place, and I had always thought blue was the rarest color.   

Lots of rue anemones--both white and pink.

There were several clumps of large flowered bellwort with their gracefully hanging blossoms.

I was specifically looking for spring beauties and trout lilies but didn't find any. However the Juneberry trees were in bloom and all those blue hepaticas made up for not seeing many other wild flowers.