Spring in North Idaho

It's spring in Shenanigan Valley. Sunshine, warmth and wild grasses greening really does lift the spirit.

 The buttercup is always the first wild flower to bloom, sometimes as early as the end of February -- depending. When I was small, Mom and I always had a race to find the first one. Inevitably, I'd get off the school bus to her chortle of, "I found the first buttercup."

 The purple grass widow is always the second wildflower - a meadow flower like the buttercup. But it grows everywhere on our 66 acres -- among the pines, in the pastures.

Then the spring beauty, which Mom and I called the May flower. I don't know why - it normally blooms in April.

I didn't know until recently that this lily is called the yellow fawn lily - we always called it the wild Easter lily. It bloomed around Easter.

And the violets are blooming in the grass down at the house where I grew up. Oh, they weren't always there. I brought some to Mom in the early '80s from a meadow in Maryland near where I was stationed at Ft. Meade. Then they were white with violet spots, but through the years they've changed. Why? Soil composition? I just don't know. I'll just enjoy them.