Trout-lily time

Every year at about this time I go on a usually hopeless quest for trout-lilies. We've found a few solitary blooms growing near our creek once or twice but none in the past three or four years.

But yesterday there they were all over the place--mottled leaves and lovely little yellow blossoms shyly poking up through the dry brown leaves in the woods along the creek. Why this year and not last year or the year before? What conditions changed to allow trout lilies to grow? I wish I knew.

Nearby we saw buckeye buds bursting open and dutchman's breeches hanging dainty and white among their feathery green leaves.

And trilliums. I've been worrying about the trilliums ever since last fall, when the power company sprayed weed-killer all up the slope where trilliums usually grow. Yesterday we found trilliums blossoming abundantly on either side of that slope, but the sprayed area still looks scorched and lifeless, like the aftermath of a massacre.

Today storms are moving in and my schedule looks about as grim as that scorched slope. I'd like to surround myself with a margin of green studded with blossoms and buckeyes, but I can't uproot my woods and carry them to campus. Instead, I'll keep the images in mind, and whenever I feel the grim slope sliding into my vision, I'll just shift a little to the left and look at the trilliums and trout-lilies.