Winter Weeds

Spring. We all think about it. We all love it; especially, when the days shorten to next to nothing and the cold pushes us indoors. And perhaps that’s why no one celebrates the green underfoot as the so called winter weeds begin to appear, the cold loving plants that thrive on the bare earth before the sun and its heat begin to bake things in the spring. No one sees them. Yet, there they are thistles, and grasses, and the like, and of course that one harbinger of spring, the bluebonnet.

On a foray into the yards yesterday, there they were, little bluebonnet plants, growing low to the ground, responding well to the latest round of moisture, as if all it took, really, to get them sprouted was a heavy dew, and maybe that’s all it does take. I mean, it’s a Texas plant, and who can count on rain all the time. It’s entirely likely that back in the day, the spirit of the bluebonnet looked down at the situation and decreed it was okay to sprout if even a drop of moisture touched a scarified seed shell.

And while we think of them as spring plants, they actually run a winter growth cycle that goes from now until March, culminating in that ecstatic explosion of color we all celebrate. It’s a little sad to think of it as a death throes, because we’re so happy to see it, but it does mark the beginning of the end for the little plant. But that seems like nit-picking. Are we celebrating the end of winter or the coming of spring? Both, probably, but more the latter than the former. Why? Because being optimistic creatures by nature, I suppose we chose to focus on the coming of the light rather than the passing of the dark.