At this time of year, we become searchers for signs of growth. The first blades of grass, the first wild flowers, even the first dandelions give proof that spring and its colours will conquer the brown and white of winter.
Hope is ours now that the first photos of crocuses, sent by our readers in southern prairie regions, are starting to appear, some of which we hope to share with you: crocuses with antlers, crocuses with kids and crocuses in their simple field glory.
Their appearance means my favourite wildflowers, the shooting stars, might soon bloom if there’s enough moisture and warmth.
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Alberta writer Annora Brown, in her 1954 book Old Man’s Garden, talks about the various names for this flower, among them the far less poetic fish hook and bird bill.
“Best of all, perhaps, is the name of Indian chief,” wrote Brown. “The flower is a perfect little prairie Indian with its long nose, the band of vermilion beads about its forehead and the long-plumed head-dress thrown back from its face.”
Such is my eagerness to see greenery that I’d welcome even a dandelion as evidence that winter is truly gone. Though they are the bane of many a farmer, field and forage crop, dandelions have their role in nature’s play.
Brown writes about homesick easterners who longed, apparently as I do now, for the cheer of dandelions as a harbinger of spring.
But I wouldn’t go as far as they in my longing. Brown said that many of these homesteaders to Western Canada “cultivated a tiny plot of dandelions on the prairies, hemmed in with sunken chicken wire to keep out the gophers and watered with precious water drawn from a well or carried from the river.”
Well, they did one heck of a job. In fact, this might mean dandelions are one more thing we can blame on the Easterners. But right about now, as we search for signs of spring, maybe we wouldn’t blame them at all.
