Glacier lilies

Windy today so the photo of the Glacier Lily is blurry---the flower is quite large---thus the latin name Erythronium " grandiflorum". The erythronium is from the greek erythro meaning red . I guess in some species the flowers are red but it's yellow around here. Another explanation for the Erythronium in the name is that the tips of the stamens are red in one of my field guides--I don't know as they were covered with yellow pollen and they may be red underneath. I'll check again in a few days and see if the wind has dispersed the pollen and find out the answer. The field guides tell me this flower was eaten raw and cooked---it has an edible corm down deep in the earth that is hard to get to. I have never tried any part of the plant--too beautiful to eat. I noticed that the sring beauties were up too( Claytonia lanceolata)--My kids and I have eaten them raw--the corm is not very deep and the taste reminds me of a ricy potato--the corms are quite small and again it's too beautiful to eat unless in a survival situation. I'll try to dig up a picture of one( no- not a bad pun). My camera died after just a few pictures up at the land this weekend so I wasn't able to get pictures of the skunk cabbage( Lysichitum americanus) coming up( one of the only plants I know of that can generate it's own heat inside). I was in deep need of my annual stinging nettle fix and this winter has been a long one so they are just starting to push thier purple sprouts through the warming ground. I collected a handfull near a spring and made a nice meal of nettles and a rainbow trout my boys caught. I also used some to treat my elbow injury by whipping the joint with the nettles so stimulate a histamine response and help the damaged tendon to get better circulation. It works quite well as my elbow numbed up quite nice and I was able to work on pruning my fruit trees without much pain. I never wear gloves when I pick nettles and the tips of my fingers go numb and stay that way for hours--it works. As I mentioned we had a long winter--we found 5 deer skeletons--all well chewed up--Go grizzlies, wolves, lions and coyotes!!!!. Still several feet of snow in the darker woods. One more flower on the rollcall----Waterleaf(Hydrophyllum capitatum) on the side of the road across from the house.

Frogs are Croaking!!

Tonight I went out to feed the horse and close up the chicken coop and I heard the frogs in the wetlands for the first time this year. It was in the mid 50's today but will be in the 20's tonight. We had 13 inches of snow last Saturday and I still have snowbanks around the house as high as my waist. The pasqueflowers are up ---A somewhat blurry picture of my favorite flower. Can you see the fairy in all that fuzz?