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Blooming wildflowers are pretty as picture
(by Hertha Binder - May 06, 2010)
OF KIDS AND NATURE, BY HERTHA BINDER
Blooming wildflowers are pretty as picture
Little wildflowers have so much delicate beauty.
One warm Saturday some years back in spring, my husband said, "Let's go for a walk to Headwaters Park." We hadn't been there yet that year.
I was all for it. A trail winds along the lake's western shore, wide enough for bicyclists and horseback riders. To keep the shrubs from overgrowing the path, 10 to 20 feet on either side is mowed. But, to give wildflowers a chance to grow, those naturalists who manage the park don't cut down the grass every week, maybe just three times a year.
Tom likes to walk fast for exercise. Stopping for a minute, he asked when I caught up with him, "Not feeling well? You are so slow today."
"I'm OK. I just like to look at all those flowers." Could also be that I admire them as an excuse to rest.
He raised his brows. "They are neat. Now let's go."
We got our exercise all right, but the next day I had another idea. "I'll go back to the park and try to take pictures of the wildflowers." The camera was dangling from my wrist.
"Oh? Take some Off along." Tom was busy on his computer.
On the way to the park, I passed two houses where the rhododendrons were already in full bloom, big and gorgeous. One shrub was pale pink; the other had an orange hue. What a splash of color!
Back on yesterday's trail was a patch of tiny golden-yellow flowers, about 10 inches off the ground. In the hurry yesterday, I had thought they were buttercups, but that was a mistake. These here had delicate, slim petals, about 10 or 12 on each blossom. All together, the flowers looked like fragile lace on the green grass, yet they must be quite hardy or they wouldn't come up in patches of about 200. I sat down beside them taking pictures.
A couple approached. They looked familiar. I'd probably seen them before.
"How come you're here all by yourself?" the man asked. "Your husband left you in the lurch?"
Giving them an uncertain smile, I shrugged. "I don't feel abandoned. Just trying to photograph these little beauties here. Don't know their name, though."
"Those are golden ragworts," said the lady. "They grow all over; just a bunch of weeds."
"But they are pretty." I wound my camera.
The two of them looked at each other as if to say, "What a nut," and moved on.
Just a few feet down the road were large patches of violets, some of them a dark, saturated, velvety purple, others of a paler, lavender color. And what wonderful fragrance.
They reminded me of a song by Schubert about a violet. It is a simple melody, and we learned to sing it in school. The little flower hopes to be picked by a pretty girl and put into her hair (which plant would want to be picked?), but the girl doesn't see the violet and steps on it. The posy is still happy. I never liked that song, because the flower is the loser and doesn't even fight back. Yet here I could see how easily one might step on the violets which grow so close to the ground. I nearly had to lie on my stomach to get a good shot of them.
A bit further were wild geraniums, little dusty-pink flowers, each with five round petals. They seemed to retreat from the sun, blooming more abundantly in shady areas. I just hoped that my cheap little camera was able to record all the delicate beauty.
These tiny flowers made me think of meadows in Austria, where I grew up. Over there people are not as fanatic about mowing their lawns as we are. They do it about every three weeks, giving the wildflowers a chance to bloom: bluebells and red clover, violets, buttercups and even poppies. Maybe my fondness for these little blossoms started when I was a kid.
When my film was used up, I turned back over a small trail that leads close to the water's edge. Not many flowers were under the dense stand of trees, but right by the water was a patch of tiny white blossoms, looking like miniature daisies.
Just then a family of Canada geese was gently gliding towards the shore and, guided by the parent, stepped on land. Those ugly things! Not only did they trample all over the baby daisies, they even pecked at them and pulled some out. I didn't see whether they really gobbled the flowers down or just vandalized them. In my mood of admiring and protecting little flowers, I ran at the geese and chased them off. With loud and angry squawking they took off, and I saw them go on land a few hundred feet away. I couldn't see and didn't want to know what flowers they were damaging there.
On the way home I again passed the rhododendrons. Their flashiness seemed gaudy compared to the delicate beauty of all my little wildflowers.
A few days later I got my photos. They turned out better than I had expected; all the little details were showing.
Tom looked at them. "Why don't you have one of the pictures enlarged and hang it here in the dining room?"
"Really?"
"Sure. This one with the yellow ones on both sides of the violets. Renoir couldn't have painted them better. We'll have the delicate beauty of those little wildflowers for years to come."
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