Jacks in the Woodland

Jack-in-the-pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum)

(also called Bog onion, Brown dragon, Indian turnip)

One morning, snow covers the quiet ground down by the creek, and the little tributary's voice is silent under its blanket of ice.  A few days later, lovely crumbly dark earth is revealed in all its elemental fragrance, and the creek sings a raucous ditty as it roars downhill with its tumbling freight of melting ice, twigs and dessicated leaves.  

Hallelujah, there are "jacks" dancing in all their stripey magnificence there just a few days later.  Wood ducks are nesting on a pond nearby, and greenery is coming up and out everywhere we look - a whole choir of robins is hopping from branch to branch in the overstory and singing their hearts out for another lifegiving rain.

Winter was all right, and somehow or other, we got through it, even managed to do a little blooming indoors now and then, but spring has come to the Two Hundred Acre Wood, and yes, we can certainly do this............  Verily, merrily, we can do this.