I may only have a few blossoms of certain wildflowers, but the violets this year have taken over large sections of my lawn. The dog violets have created a carpet of pale blue which makes it difficult to walk without stepping on their blossoms.
A Sea of Pale Blue
These small pale blue violets don’t stand out and get noticed as much as the larger and darker violets, but they are pretty “weeds” on my lawn. I end up having patches on my lawn were I skip mowing to leave some the flowers while blossoming.
Pale Little Violets
The birds were singing more on this warmer day as spring officially starts. And the ground and the outside house walls had plenty of flies crawling around so I could have turned my tree frog loose for an afternoon smack when the sun came out later in the day. And it must be spring as I spotted a mosquito too, even though there are no spring flowers blooming. I rather see flowers than those nasty insects.
Pretty Violets
Wisconsin became a state on May 29, 1848 and when the state flowers were first nominated in 1908, the school children voted for the wildflower on Arbor Day 1909. They selected the wood violet over the wild rose, trailing arbutus, and the white water lily.
The wood violet is commonly seen in wet woodland, meadow areas, along roadsides and on my lawn this year. They are also in my woods and it seemed like a fitting picture to have a wood violet near some wood.
Woodsy Wood Violets
A sunny, yellow smile on a sunny Sunday morning. Less common than the purple colored violets, the Downy Yellow Violet adds some color on the woodland floor along with the other violets in purples and blues and the pinks from the Spring Beauties.
Downy Yellow Violet
April showers bring May flowers, but this year it was April and May snows that eventually retreated that allowed some May flowers in a compress time so different varieties were blooming at the same time when normally they wouldn’t be. Now the wood violet is adding color amongst the white wood anemones and sometimes you can find a cluster of color.
A dear friend recently told me that ‘family does not have to be blood, sometimes they are just different flowers growing in the same garden’. Even if these violets are the same species, each is slightly different in size, color or flaws from insect damage but their uniqueness, like in people, create a beautiful garden.
Wood Violets
