ramblings from an arkansas farm girl
I love this time of year when all the tiny weed flowers begin blooming. Tiny weed flowers are a sure sign that spring is just around the bend. I’ve already noticed a few butterflies flitting about in our yard!
In earliest spring after a long winter’s nap, the early butterflies and bees are hungry for nectar. Tiny weed flowers provide a sweet buffet for our earliest pollinators.
If your goal is to rid your yard of these plants, I encourage you to look at them in a different light.
Since I returned from Iceland, I’ve been writing like a fiend. Between all the words, I garden. That’s pretty much it. Weeds, y’all. They are thriving. I know my garden as well as I know the manuscript I’m working on. Because when I say, I garden, what I mean is, I crawl around on my hands and knees looking between flowers, pulling weeds by hand, studying the landscape and what’s changed in my brief absence. (Much like scrubbing the lines of my writing, pulling weed words. See what I did there?) I’m here to announce there are some mid-June garden shenanigans at work in my flower beds.
For real.
It’s as though the tiny garden gnomes said, “Hey, she’s gone for two whole weeks! PAR-TEEEE.”
And they have been.Continue Reading
Right now in the Arkansas Delta, the color purple is putting on a show. Fields are dressed and ready for an early spring, the color explosion proof that the soil is warming to the point of supporting blooms. This particular bloom, common henbit, looks anything but common when it blankets an entire field. It has a fancy name, Lamium Amplexicaul. Yes, henbit is a weed, but I’ve always been fond of it. And I’ve never really understood why we don’t consider it vase-worthy.
From the roadside, fields of henbit resemble Oregon lavender fields. Or a Monet painting hanging somewhere far from the Delta.
No doubt Monet’s Champ d’avoine is a stunning work of art, but Arkansas Delta in Purple is pretty breathtaking too.
Henbit d’Athelstan
