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In my reading I came across this link to Audubon’s Native Plant Database. Where, for the mere mention of your zip-code and an email address, you can find the native plants for your area that will help to bring birds to your yard.

Cool thing is, the image on that page was of a male goldfinch standing atop a purple coneflower, Echinacea.

We’re treated to this site every summer and fall season. As the purple flowers mature and the cones grow taller the finches visit more often. They dine on the seeds whenever they’re deemed ready. I really do get enjoyment seeing the brilliantly colored birds carefully standing on the spiky seed heads to get at their lunch.

We have a perfect view from the kitchen window to spy on them being so busy. If the window is open, you can hearing them chattering to one another!

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When it’s raining or even on a cloudy day you’ll miss out seeing the sunny yellow blossoms of Coltsfoot. It blooms in Eastern North America in early Spring each April.

Coltsfoot is one of my favorite Spring Ephemeral flowers because it’s such a bright happy color when it’s in bloom and everything else is still old winter drab.

It’s also fun to show people that it’s not a dandelion! Driving past the coltsfoot that bloom next to a country road most people probably do think it to be dandelions in flower. Neither would be noticed on the cloudy days because their flowers will be closed up tight.

During the first week of April coltsfoot was blooming in all its glory along the creek near the spillway on the Mill Race Trail at Little Buffalo State Park in Newport, PA. I had never seen such a display as I was treated to that day.

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Took the puppy on her first trip to a local park. It was precious seeing her sniffing and tasting her first dandelions and violets!

Alas, no extra hand to carry a camera for snapping some flower photos. She’s too little yet and needs my full attention. The pictures would have been a complete blur.

I tried to remember the dozen flowering plants we saw. Here they are in the approximate order we found them as we walked from the parking lot and followed the Juniata River flowing south.

• dandelion
• violets, dark purple
• purple dead nettle
• Pennsylvania bittercress
• spring beauty
• lesser celandine
• garlic mustard
• bluebells, mertensia
• chickweed
• ground ivy
• trout lily, a single plant
• speedwell

The folks who manage the natural areas here could use a lesson or two in the value of preserving native plants. Much too much garlic mustard and lesser celandine was present in the places adjacent to the river where bluebells should be swaying in the breeze.

Over the past few years too many trees have been cut down disrupting the habitats of the native plants, not to mention the little critters who may have called this small stretch of nature home. Disappointing.

After our walk we took a little drive down River Road to see the Spring blooming trees. Beautiful flowering almond and cherry trees scattered among a large number of forsythia shrubs brought color to many spaces and accented the daffodils and narcissus that were blooming profusely.

Another of my favorite bloomers at this time was in all its glory, the redbud tree. It’s so beautiful to see its purple at the edge of the woodlands. Trees are still bare of leaves at this point.

This weekend would be a great time to investigate what’s blooming around your neighborhood. The colors of Spring are everywhere!

Millerstown Park is less than a mile south of the town square and the Route 322 exit for Millerstown, Pennsylvania.

Spring has come to South-central PA at last. Flowers will be picking up speed in opening their blooms this week with the forecasted warm weather.

In early April the spicebush is one of our first native plants to bloom.

Spicebushes full of bright lemony-yellow blooms getting ready to burst open. The first few flowers had already blossomed in the sunshine.

Only a handful of different plants were seen to be blooming or nearly so at Little Buffalo State Park on April 5, 2017, including:

• bloodroot
• hepatica
• spring beauty
• coltsfoot – a spectacular display!
• spicebush
• maple trees
• chickweed
• Pennsylvania bittercress
• purple dead nettle
• dandelion
• redstem storksbill – a new posie for me!
• periwinkle – at the Civil War Cemetery
• daffodils – planted at the Day Use Area

Low-growing chickweed and spring beauty both have white flowers with five petals, but they look quite different from one another.

Chickweed is smaller with its elongated and deeply cleft petals, which make it appear to have 10 petals.

Spring beauty flower petals are much larger and their pink anthers at the stamen tips really stick out.

Botanical images of Redstem Stork’s Bill in the public domain

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Curiosity got the best of me during my first outing this Spring to our nearby Little Buffalo Pennsylvania State Park. I had gone there on a partly cloudy day that promised to have warmer temperatures than what we’ve been used to in search of bloodroot. It’s one of the first woodland flowers to bloom, but alas only a couple of these plants were seen flowering.

On many previous trips to the state park I had seen what looked to be a very old cemetery, so this time I pulled over to investigate it on foot. Passing by in a vehicle you could see the old headstones are very different than what is used these days. They had more character and style, right down to the style of lettering that was etched into the stone.

A monument to the old cemetery had an American flag and a GAR sign struck in the ground. The monument reads, “Rudolph Cemetery Dedicated to The Men Who Served” and goes on to list five local men who died during the American Civil War and one who died during World War II – and are buried at this cemetery – some with wives or other family members.

I walked around each grave to read the names and imagine what their lives were like so many years ago. Of course I was looking for the oldest grave there. It turns out that a couple were born in 1780-90 and perished around the time of the Civil War.

In taking this somber walk around I was delighted to find a new blooming plant – new to me of course. I’d never seen the pink flowers of this low-growing plant before. Only one or two flowers were blooming on each of several plants growing in the soil on this hillside cemetery.

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