I don’t have much patience.  I always want to know now!  Nature teaches me to slow down and wait for answers.  At the end of April, I was hiking at the Girl Scout Camp and ran across these tight little buds.  This plant was anywhere that it was wet – ditches, along the banks of the lake, in the creek beds.  Flower field guides don’t do you much good unless the flower is in bloom, so I knew I would have to wait.

Today, while walking in a different woods, I stumbled on a huge patch of this same plant… but now it was in bloom.  The vibrant yellow absolutely took my breath away.

Golden Ragwort.  Truth be told, I showed the above photo to a wildflower fanatic friend of mine and he told me what it was, so I’ve known its name for quite some time.  I looked it up in the Peterson Field Guide and saw the rather unimpressive colored drawing and was mildly interested that the red buds would turn into yellow flowers.  I wasn’t expecting much…  Then, toward the end of a walk that hadn’t turned up anything new… there it was.  Just stunning!  Next year, I will know the plant by the leaves and buds.

I was also impatient about wanting to see Mayapple Blossoms.  I wrote in my last post about searching and searching until I finally found one or two plants whose buds had opened.  Today, of course, nearly all the Mayapples had open flowers!  I shot a ton more Mayapple blossoms today.

A few of the Canada Mayflowers were open, too… but just a few tiny, tiny ones.  And how about this False Solomon’s Seal?  Is this what the flower looks like, or was I impatient?  Did I just get the buds?