A short time ago in the Milky Way galaxy, I was listening to NPR as I drove to work. The programming that day was typical of what we’ve all heard for the past few months — there was political drama that needed to be dissected, and the endless minutia of who said what about whom that needed to be hashed and rehashed until it became excruciating. I was thinking of changing the channel.
But then, our friends at NPR did us a wonderful service by inserting a random story about the super bloom that is currently occurring in southern California. After years of drought, more than five inches of rain fell between October and February, and that rain was enough to fuel a massive response from the plants.
Today, the landscape of the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park (near San Diego) has been painted with a carpet of flowers.
This short story was just the tonic my tired mind needed. All of us who live through the winters of the Northeast are familiar with “March malaise,” but this year’s has been magnified by what feels like an interminable cycle of bad news about the world we live in.
Then, this story about flowers in California falls upon me like rain, and as I drove through the monochrome winter landscape, I could feel the seeds of optimism starting to germinate in my mind.
In southern California, they haven’t seen a significant blooming of flowers for more than a decade. Seeds that have been waiting in the soil for more than those 10 years have finally had the chance to grow, and they’ve all done it at the same time. Here in our area, we have the wonderful phenomenon of a massive bloom every year, and we can see the world transform from white to green in what feels like the blink of an eye. The birds are already singing and my personal records suggest that we might start to see migrant birds like phoebes and tree swallows as early as next weekend.
The arrival of migratory birds sounds wonderful, but my mind keeps going back to that story about flowers in the deserts of southern California.
I realize that after a long and snowy winter, I am desperate to see some color. Thinking that you might be in the same boat, I went through my archives, looking for nice examples of wildflowers that could be found blooming in April. I found exactly what I was looking for.
During an April visit to Slabsides — the writing retreat of the naturalist John Burroughs — I captured a collection of photos of the wildflowers of early spring. I hemmed and hawed about which photos to select, paralyzed by the notion that I could only pick two. Finally I decided to surrender myself to purely artistic desire.
One photo shows a close-up of a blue violet. I don’t show the entire flower because I wanted to maximize the contrast between purple and green — one of my favorite combinations — and I really like the mystery of the inner sanctum of the flower’s throat and blurry shape of an unopened flower in the background. The photo makes me feel good.
The other photo shows a close-up of the flowers of a Solomon’s seal plant. I chose it because I like the saturation of green throughout. There is a very shallow depth of field, which produces crisp details in a few places, and a soft blurring in others. The arching lines of the veins in the leaves are not only beautiful to look at, but also suggest shelter and protection for the delicate flowers hanging beneath them.
Perhaps more than the photo of the violet, Solomon’s seal is soothing and promises that warmth and color are not too far away. I, for one, can’t wait.
Bill Danielson has worked for the National Park Service, the US Forest Service, and the Massachusetts State Parks. He has been a professional writer and nature photographer for 19 years and he also teaches high school biology and physics. Visit www.speakingofnature.com for more information, or go to Speaking of Nature on Facebook.