Celebrating Spring with Mushrooms and Flowers!

I've been offline and on the land the last two weeks, working in our garden and our friends' gardens, as well as exploring this beautiful region. After cozying up this winter, I am savoring the thrill of being outside again and reconnecting with everything going on around us. Spring is definitely in the air! Driving through our small town, I see buttery daffodils smiling brightly along the fence lines of people's homes. Fruit trees are beginning to bloom and mushrooms are pushing up from the forest floor (thanks @sagescrub for foraging this beautiful mandala of yellow foot, hedgehog, and wood ear mushrooms).

My own body is awakening to spring's call as I find myself longing to be active. Every time the sun comes out, I hastily grab my pruners and put on muck boots to see what I can plant, weed, or prune. And there's no lack of things to do as cultivation is an ongoing balance between human domestication and nature's wildness. Digging blackberries out of the garden being one such example. (Side note: I found out recently that most of our region's blackberries actually were brought here by Luther Burbank from India. He bred them for the "middle class" palate, but joke's on us in the end because they're literally a thorn on our side. Read the full story on NPR.

And then there's the abundance & splendor of spring! My eyes are delighting in all the colors! Jewel-toned anemones a friend gifted to me for helping at her homestead. Oh-so-cheerful yellow daffodils everywhere. A velvety carpet of red camellia blossoms.

Spring's splendor is giving me inspiration for a project I'm starting: weekly "Found Flowers" arrangements (#foundflowers)! It's good motivation for me to keep making arrangements of garden and wildcrafted flowers, express my creativity, share my love of flowers, and do more of what inspires me. Interested in joining this project? Let me know!