SITY: Reminders

Back in April I spotted some flowers that I hadn’t seen in the yard before, at least not that I could recall.

It had to be a dogwood flower, I thought. Nothing else has quite that look. It puzzled me, though, because dogwood flowers are supposed to be bigger and white or pink, not sad and sort of shriveled yellowish things. It didn’t look the way it ought to.

That was just because it needed more time to grow. A week later, the flowers had been transformed.

That was unexpected. It never would have occurred to me that the flower could change that much. And I had no idea that I had a flowering dogwood in my yard. So wow.

Let this be a reminder to me to be patient and to keep an open mind. There’s a new plant with three leaves growing next to the driveway. When I first spotted it, I assumed it was poison ivy, but when I looked at it today, it suddenly reminded me of trillium. Could it be trillium, or perhaps Jack-in-the-pulpit, which also has three leaves? The only way for me to know is to wait and to watch. And there’s another new plant, also somewhat like poison ivy in appearance, that’s probably wild sarsaparilla, but where are the flowers, which are supposed to come out at the same time as the leaves? I was frustrated today when I looked for them and couldn’t find them, but it’s way too early to make any assumptions. I must be patient and keep an open mind.

And let this also be a reminder for me to tell me husband to leave those particular plants alone. The most likely reason that I didn’t know I had a dogwood is that my husband keeps cutting it back (understandably, though–it’s not in a good spot for a tree). If I don’t tell him to leave the new plants alone, he’ll assume they’re poison ivy and kill them. Then I would never know for sure what kind of plants they were, which would be even more frustrating.